Keneally Makes a List of His Own : ‘Harrowing,’ ‘astounding’ and ‘impeccable’ are some of the words the UCI-affiliated writer uses to describe the Spielberg film based on his 1982 novel.

Australian novelist Thomas Keneally hadn’t planned to attend the Washington, D.C., invitational screening of “Schindler’s List.” The movie is Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Keneally’s 1982 fact-based novel about an unlikely hero of the Holocaust, a German industrialist-Nazi Party member who secretly saved 1,300 Jews from dying in the death camps.

Keneally, who is winding up a year’s leave of absence from his teaching duties in the graduate Program in Writing at UC Irvine in order to serve as chairman of Australia’s political Republican Movement, had been invited to attend the screening in Washington on Tuesday.

“But,” he said by phone from his home in Sydney last week, “the tyranny of distance will prevent it, I’m afraid. So I’ll just be at home in ‘Oz’ working on a new book.”

Keneally’s plans, however, quickly changed.

Less than an hour later, he received a call from Universal Pictures requesting his presence at the screening, saying--as he would later put it--that “what had begun as a low-key event was becoming more high key.”

So Keneally--along with his wife, Judy, and their daughter, Jane--flew to Washington on Sunday and on Tuesday evening were at the Wisconsin Avenue Theater for the screening. Among the audience: Spielberg and his actress wife, Kate Capshaw; Liam Neeson (who plays Oskar Schindler); Ben Kingsley, and a host of other cast members and studio honchos.

That’s not to mention President Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The Clintons also attended a pre-screening reception in the theater lobby, which, given the serious subject matter of the black-and-white film, was later described by studio publicists as “very low key.”

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Keneally was en route to New York City for another screening and could not be reached for comment Wednesday, but he had viewed the film for the first time Monday morning: at a private screening in a suburban Maryland theater with an audience that consisted only of him, his wife and daughter and two journalists.

“I was quite overwhelmed by it,” he said by phone from his Washington hotel room Tuesday. “Unlike a lot of long films--it’s over three hours long--it seems much briefer. Even though it’s harrowing, it’s an astounding experience, and you think you’ve been in the cinema about 40 minutes, really, when it comes to an end.”

Keneally praised Neeson and the other actors’ performances and said the narrative pace and directorial judgment are “impeccable. So once you’re in, there is no question you’ll be there to the end, and the resonances the film leaves with you are very long lasting.”

But given that it’s his book on the screen, he conceded that it was hard not to want to play director while watching.

“There were a few matters of emphasis I might have done differently--mainly for the sake of accuracy--but basically the Oskar you see in there is very close to the Oskar of the book,” he said. “All the ambiguities (of the man) are skillfully worked and--oh, it’s an admirable piece of cinema, no question.”

The interesting thing, he said, “is when you come out later and remember that the dinosaurs (of ‘Jurassic Park’) and (alien in) ‘E.T.’ came from this same person. This is such an authoritative piece of filmmaking--authoritative in a different sort of way from them--that it’s very hard to believe it comes from the same hand.”

Universal, Keneally added, “took a risk asking me (to the screening). I could have walked out of the cinema saying, ‘The bastard perverted my vision.’ ”

Earlier Tuesday morning, the Keneallys had joined Spielberg and the cast at an awards ceremony at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, where Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg presented the Medal of Remembrance to Schindler’s widow, Emilie, who lives in Buenos Aires. Her husband died in 1974.

Schindler’s story was barely known in America until Keneally wrote his prize-winning bestseller in 1982, and the tale may never have been told had it not been for a broken briefcase and a classic case of serendipity on a hot summer day in 1980.

Keneally, in Los Angeles promoting a new book, had take his broken briefcase to the Beverly Hills Handbag Studio. He was standing outside looking at price tags in the window when the shop’s owner, Leopold Page, invited him into the air-conditioned shop.

Page had been among the 1,300 Jews rescued by Schindler. And learning that Keneally was a writer, Page said in a heavy Eastern European accent: “You know, I have a story for you.”

Although Spielberg purchased the film rights to Keneally’s book in 1983, it took a decade to develop the film, primarily due to delays in writing a suitable script.

It was well worth the wait, acknowledged Keneally, who visited Spielberg on location in Krakow, Poland, last May. In fact, as he sees it, the timing couldn’t be better.

“Spielberg said in Krakow that this isn’t a film that could have been made in the dumb, greedy ‘80s--that it had to be made now,” Keneally said. “Maybe there’s some truth in that, given that it’s the first time in modern European history since World War II that ethnic cleansing is back in vogue: The beast is in heat again.”

“Schindler’s List,” Keneally added, “is going to give the concept of ethnic cleansing a bad name for those who are are willing to confront the film.”