My Night with Two Escorts

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Darin Strauss

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The Book on 'Booked'

11:45 AM, June 12, 2008 | Comments (0)

This is the first post on our new blog, “Booked” — where I’ll be sending updates on my 22-city book tour. Think of it as your behind-the-scenes look at the least exciting of all the performance arts:public readings! A book tour is a mixed bag: part Spinal...

The Book Tour Schedule

12:16 PM, June 11, 2008 | Comments (1)

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29	30

Darin Strauss

In the way that the psychologically-wounded bad guy is more fun to read about (and to write about) than is the grinning, problem free crime-fighter—the dude so Hollwoodly handsome in his red cape, who smiles as he biceps aloft the tottering tram car that has all the hostage children aboard…. In that way, it would be no fun for you to read (or me to write up) last night’s reading at A Great Good Place for Books. It was a crowded success, and we all had fun. I’m not going to write about that. Fun doesn’t make for a good read. Fun is no fun.

I will say that Michael Chabon’s mother, Sharon, came out to hear me.Sharon is a very sweet woman, and she’s an escort. Not that kind of escort; she’s what’s known as a media escort—a job that constitutes one of the more interesting quirks of book touring. There’s a sub-rosa economy out there: a system of people in every city whose job it is to pick up writers at the airport and drive them to bookstores, and then to their hotels. Just as—and any historian will tell you this—it’s the White House staff that knows the really personal dirt on any given Administration, the escorts are literature's best gossip keepers. For example, when pressed about who's the biggest jerk that they’ve ever had to escort, those who'll talk usually tell you (but not for attribution): “Martha Stewart.” It’s nearly unanimous. A surprise second-place in the SUJP (Strauss Unofficial Jerk Poll) is MargaretCho, the comedienne-author who wrote “I'm the One That I Want.”

Most escorts are tight-lipped. But after a few days, and many 3-hour trips to “sign stock” at each bookstore in a given city, I’ve gotten quite a few of them to open up. One told me that she drove John McCain around when he was promoting a book that he'd written before he was a presidential candidate. The senator had just given a morning talk; he’d told the crowd that he’d never lied in his life. “I asked McCain, when he got back in the car,” the escort told me: “‘OK, be honest, senator—when was the last lie you told?’” McCain’s answer, according to the escort: “This morning.” Another one met Barack Obama, and told me that—at the local NPR station where Obama was to be interviewed—the producer,the station manager, and all the secretaries got their hair done before he showed up. (And people say Obama has problems winning over women….)

Many of the escorts are, like Sharon Chabon, semi-retired people who enjoy the company of visiting writers. (Mrs. Chabon had come to hear me read yesterday when she was off-duty, which was beyond the niceness pale—nobody whose job it is to hear three or four readings a week should waste a free night at a bookstore.) So, last night, my escort was Frank Lauria, a salty ex-New Yorker who makes great use of the chiseled language of the military. (He was drafted in the sixties, but missed going to Vietnam by some dint of Italian luck.)

Escorts. You drive around town with them, eat your meals with them, and therefore—a writer isn’t used to having minders—they become your friend for the day. (Your paid friend, but still). Some, however, are looking not just to be friends. (It’s a small community, and I don’t want to give away state secrets, so I’ll refer to the specifics as generally as I can.) One told me s/he “believes in the herb” and offered to “score” me some marijuana. Another hit on me, saying “If I knew as a young woman what I know now about the boudoir, I’d be a highly priced paramour.”(She also offered to come up and take a shower with me, but then quickly said, “Just kidding.”) One is like the ghost of Christmas Future, because s/he says: “I was a writer and had six bestsellers,” as s/he takes your bags and puts them in her/his trunk. One of the most beloved of all escorts actually ended up marrying one of the writers who’d been under his/her care.

As Martin Amis wrote: Early in a tour, the nightly reading feels like an ordeal; then a hurdle; then a testing routine. But soon it's almost as enjoyable as a dangerous habit. Your readers become your supporters, as he says — they sustain the one-man team. He’s right,except it’s a two-man team. If a writer is nothing without a reader, then a writer on tour is nothing without a reader and an escort; who else is going to get him to meet that reader?

Anyway, I hope you can come to my next events; they’re getting fun—as the crowds get more nicely-sized.

Monday, June 30 7:30 PM,
POWELL'S CITY OF BOOKS
1005 W. Burnside
Portland, OR 97209

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