Authors Eric Van Lustbader, Chuck Hogan, Tracy Chevalier, and Julie Powell kicked off the exhibits opening Friday afternoon in conversation with Brad Hooper of Booklist, sharing impressions about what it's like to have your book turned into a feature film. Powell said she had close to nothing to do with the adaptation of her book Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously into a hit film starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams.
Van Lustbader talked about his close friendship with author Robert Ludlum, which led him to continue the Bourne series after Ludlum's sudden death in 2001, confiding that he thought Matt Damon was the perfect actor for the title role–much better than Brad Pitt, whose prior film commitments prevented him from taking the role.
Chevalier also said that she was not deeply involved with the making of Girl with a Pearl Earring, so it was with some trepidation that she viewed the finished film for the first time, saying she sat stunned through it, concluded that it was a beautiful movie–and then cried.
Asked what the down side was to the acclaim that comes with books as successful as his Prince of Thieves, which will soon be a major motion picture, Hogan got the biggest laugh of the program when he noted thoughtfully that there were "no drawbacks to fame."
Powell had a different take on the fame that accompanies being played by Amy Adams onscreen–and on the difference between writing fiction and memoir. She said she may be finished with the genre for the time being. The New York Times Book Review said her new memoir, Cleaving, "reveals a dark damaged persona," and "Nora Ephron won't be touching this one with a 20-foot baguette."
For the American Library Association, however, Powell revealed a self-effacing, witty, and honest persona that is crazy about libraries, especially New York Public, where she has spent a great deal of time.
All four authors spoke lovingly of their regard for and experiences in libraries, with Van Lustbader likening them to cathedrals and Chevalier saying there is only one other profession she would have considered. Had she not become a writer, she said, she would surely and happily “be sitting where you are now.”