Literary Road Trip

Novelists, political activists, celebrity tattletales, diet doctors, romantic gurus and tenured geniuses have all nestled into the brown velour seats of Diana Faust’s 1993 Acura Legend. They have whined about how hard it is to get the public to pay attention, to give a darn, to buy the book they have labored over for so long.

Faust understands. She is a media escort, the unsung hero of the book publicity tour, still the best grass-roots strategy the publishing industry has devised to stimulate sales.

Some 45,000 new books hit the American market annually. To rise above the clutter, an author has to get out and meet the people, to lurch from bookstore signing in Pasadena to speaking engagement downtown, from radio interview in Santa Monica to Hollywood cocktail party. From five to 20 itinerant scribes crisscross Los Angeles almost every week. Behind each one is a media escort, an efficient, unflappable professional who is adept at navigating, hand-holding, ego stroking and mind reading.

What do these handlers get for their trouble? From $225 to $250 per eight-hour day, plus expenses, and $35 an hour for overtime. And they collect anecdotes to dine out on till they die. “When I think of the lights of 20th century literature who have sat in my Honda Accord,” says Kathi Kamen Goldmark, for 16 years considered the most popular escort in San Francisco. “Norman Mailer, Amy Tan, E.L. Doctorow, Maya Angelou.”

Waiting to meet an author at John Wayne Airport in Orange County on a Thursday morning in May, Faust makes the best of a little down time. She checks her messages, returns calls to public relations directors at publishing houses--the people who hire her--and consults a Thomas Guide to plan the route to a series of nearby bookstores to be visited before noon.

It is just before 9, and the 38-year-old former Random House publicist has been working for more than five hours. The insistent beeps of two alarm clocks in her Silver Lake home roused her at 3:30. The streets were empty as she drove through the dawn to Beverly Hills to pick up Ilyasah Shabazz, whose memoir, “Growing Up X” (One World Books) describes her life as the daughter of Malcolm X. Faust accompanied Shabazz to a 4:30 a.m. live radio show, brought her back to the hotel two hours later, then headed for the airport. She would have finished a muffin for breakfast if the plane carrying her next client, Terrence Cheng, a first-time novelist, hadn’t landed 10 minutes early.

A 30-year-old New Yorker whose “Sons of Heaven” (William Morrow) is a fictionalized account of the events surrounding the Tiananmen Square massacre, Cheng rants about being subjected to repeated security searches at every airport on his 10-city tour.

“Oh, you were singled out because you have one-way tickets,” Faust tells him, in a voice that combines sweetness and sincerity.

In the initial 10 minutes of a relationship that will last three days and cover 11 bookstores and 373 miles, one of the key rules of escort-author communication is in play: Writers complain, the escort explains, making sense of what seems to be an irrational and hostile world. The words vary, but the messages the escort delivers are, essentially, “Poor baby”; “You were great”; “Everything’s going smoothly”; “I’m on your side.”

At first, Cheng didn’t see why he couldn’t take cabs wherever he needed to go. But one thrill-packed day in San Francisco taught him what veterans of book tours know. “Having an escort worry about where I needed to be next and how to get there de-stressed me,” he says. “I could concentrate on promoting my book.”

The Toyotas, Hondas, Buicks, Mercurys and Volvos of more than 200 escorts throughout the country become mobile offices for traveling authors. Escorts provide the Advil a writer forgot to pack, offer a Handi-Wipe to clean a stained shirt. Esther Levine, Atlanta’s reigning escort, circled the block while Texas humorist Molly Ivins shopped for cosmetics and something to wear to a television appearance when she’d flown in sweatpants and her suitcase didn’t arrive.

“It can be a little like being a baby-sitter for grown-ups,” Goldmark says. “It would be the perfect job for anyone with codependency issues.” Faust compares her role to that of an attentive mother. “I’m constantly saying to adults, ‘You’re going to be in the car for a while. Do you need to go to the bathroom before we go? Are you hungry? Are you thirsty?’ It’s absurd, but the day is about anticipating and meeting their needs.”

A resourceful escort can get an author into a gym on short notice, hunt down a coat button to match one that’s gone missing or have a broken heel repaired in the time it takes to autograph a stack of books. It’s the foolish author who confuses escorts with chauffeurs and climbs in the back seat. Chances are their “driver” knows more about promoting a book in their territory than the visitor. For example, Goldmark’s husband is a professional card player. “I knew when the No. 1 radio host’s poker night was,” she says, “so I could warn my authors that he might be in a bad mood the morning after he’d lost.”

Ken Wilson, arguably the dean of L.A.’s escort corps, has been on the road for 20 years and handles about 200 authors a year. “On the way to a TV or radio taping, I’ll tell my client who the host is, whether there will be calls from listeners, how long they’ll be on the air,” he says. “I’ll let them know there’s one interviewer who doesn’t ask actual questions, so they’ll know when he pauses it’s the writer’s turn to say something.”

Every experienced escort has horror stories about midnight phone calls from hotel rooms that “just won’t do,” or the reclusive writer whose social skills have disappeared because he’s spent too much time in the company of his computer. “Just because someone is famous doesn’t mean he won’t pass gas in your car,” says Deborah Morrison-Littell, Faust’s partner at D2 Media Services.

It isn’t fun being trapped in a car with an author who’s conducting a cell phone fight with a soon-to-be ex-spouse. The memoirs of a manic-depressive might make compelling reading, but spending the day with one can be challenging.

Who would think that the former network news anchor who has become a national father figure would be cranky and cold? Or that the kittenish chanteuse whose slurred words distinguished her singing style would show up at a book signing too drunk to stand? An escort, male or female, who can’t gracefully deflect an amorous overture might as well hang up the car keys.

Abuse can’t be taken any more personally than lechery. Media escorts maintain an informal network, and if an author has misbehaved, his next caretaker will often get a call from the previous city. At BookExpo America, the annual convention of booksellers and publishing executives, escorts from around the country throw themselves a party. Ten years ago, Goldmark arrived carrying a dartboard covered with authors’ pictures.

“The Golden Dartboard award was born, and every year, the most obnoxious person who toured would win,” recalls Emily Laisy, a Maryland-based escort who publishes a newsletter for her colleagues.

Jeffrey Archer, Martha Stewart, Faye Dunaway, Betty Friedan, Shirley MacLaine and the late Lewis Grizzard were recipients, but the Golden Dartboard was meant to be an inside joke. It was disbanded when the press began reporting on it and publishers expressed their displeasure.

“Ninety-five percent of the people you drive are fantastic,” says L.A-based Karen Hebert. “But everyone has survived a terror. After five hours of being screamed at by Faye Dunaway, I was in tears.”

Even among escorts, who have a charming flight attendant’s facility to talk to anyone about anything, Levine of Atlanta has a reputation for taming beastly charges. Gail Sheehy has been known to have a condescending manner. Levine took her shopping for kilim rugs and pine furniture between appearances, and a good time was had by all.

Most escorts who run their own businesses have a stable of part-time workers who, for $15 an hour, can fill in when the boss isn’t available. Except in New York and L.A., one or two companies dominate a city’s market. Here, half a dozen respectful and often cooperative competitors stay busy.

“We have a stand-up comedian we call on, a caterer, a retired parole officer who worked with white-collar criminals,” Faust says. “The crime writers love to pick her brain. You never want the author to worry about anything, so it’s important to act like everything’s OK. I’m glad we have some actresses who drive for us.”

Literary wannabes who think becoming friends with successful writers is an inevitable job perk make lousy escorts. Motor mouths and mentor seekers need not apply. “They don’t get it,” L.A.’s Wilson says. “In this business, you’re responsive and professional.”

Bill Young’s story is an exception. His company, Midwest Media, handles 800 author tours a year in the Chicago area. A divorced 51-year-old high school dropout with an abiding love of books, he met novelist Elizabeth Berg on a tour. They have lived together for six years.

“You fall a little bit in love with a lot of people you meet in this job, but I never looked at it as a great way to get dates,” he says. “If you do like somebody, they’re gone the next day. And if you have someone in your life, they have to put up with the ridiculous hours you keep.”

Rotten hours, too much coffee and awful food. Faust’s lunch consists of greasy chicken and chips at the UC Irvine Cross-Cultural Center. It’s only 12:30 p.m., but she almost falls asleep during Cheng’s talk. She manages to stay conscious, so on the way to her car when he asks, “Was I rambling too much?” she can honestly say, “No. You were very focused.”

The carpool lane on the 5 Freeway lives up to its promise and Faust drops Cheng at his Century City hotel at 3 p.m. She steals an hour and a half nap at home before picking up Elizabeth Drew, New Yorker magazine’s Washington correspondent, in Beverly Hills and driving her to the downtown library in time for an early-evening speaking engagement.

“Citizen McCain” (Simon and Schuster) is Drew’s 12th book on politics. In her elegant touring suit, she couldn’t be more temperamentally and stylistically different from Cheng, who promised his publisher he wouldn’t wear jeans, smoke in public or swear on the road.

It’s unusual for an escort to drive two authors in one day, much less three, but Faust likes the fact that she wouldn’t know how to describe a typical day. This long one ends around 10 p.m., when she is much too tired to eat dinner or to pick up one of the signed first editions that are the tangible spoils of a literary road warrior.