William Bratton, Cupid's Calling!

Trash-talking publishing giant and Kerik homewrecker Judith Regan moves to the City of the Angels, disses the Big Apple to the LA Weekly:

"People have a very hard time having a life here," says this single mother of two and recent paramour of ex-New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik. "And because of that, it's more and more difficult to get staff to stay in this business. It's not just ReganBooks. It's everybody in the book-publishing business. They all lie about it, they deceive you, but that is the naked ugly truth. It's very difficult, because they can't afford to have a life here."

But if New York is overly money-driven, then some people, I suggest, might say that Regan's hypercapitalistic style of publishing—recent best-selling titles include How To Make Love Like a Porn Star, Juiced and Sex, Sex, and More Sex —is part of the problem.

"Then they're completely uninformed," she snaps, voice rising, eyes turning steely. "Most of the people who write about the publishing business don't know anything about the publishing business. And let me just tell you, it's called the publishing BUSINESS! I'm not running a philanthropic library, okay? If you came in to interview anyone else, in any other kind of business, whether they were selling shoes, dresses or apartments, would you take issue with the fact that they did it successfully?"

Hypercapitalism aside, be on the lookout for more publishing industry types to start relocating to the City of the Angels—and for The New York Times to speculate that the home of Igor Stravinsky, Thomas Mann, and Franz Werfel might finally be attracting some culture.

Comments

[Jennifer]

Maybe I'm oversimplifying the issue, but if you can't keep staff because they can't afford the cost of living, couldn't you try paying them more?

[...]

If I got choose a coast I got to choose the East
I live out there, so don't go there
But that don't mean a nigga can't rest in the West
See some nice breasts in the West
Smoke some nice cess in the West
Y'all niggaz is a mess
Thinkin I'm goin stop
Givin L.A. props

[SPD]

Ain't no party like a West Coast party
'Cuz a West Coast party don't stop

[E. Steven]

Well, if a gal like Judith Regan can't make it in NY what chance is there for the rest of us?

But seriously, LA hardly needs her presence to be confirmed as a rival literary capital to NY.

As the excellent anthology Writing Los Angeles makes clear LA has always been home to writers of impeccable talent from Aldous Huxley to Upton Sinclair, Edmund Wilson, James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler, John Fante, Nathanael West, Bertolt Brecht, Charles Bukowski, Carolyn See, Walter Mosely and James Ellroy.

[David Moynihan]

Err, you could also move the company into a lower cost-of-living area. Heck, most of the printing's done in Singapore or whereever these days.

Think of Penguin, which was never the same firm after it left Baltimore... (and Mr. Steven, we claim Cain and Hammett and most of noir. But ya can have Monica Lewinsky back!)

[dead_elvis]

She thinks her employees will be able to afford a better life in California? Somebody needs to point her to the previous H&R thread about housing prices there. L.A. might not be as bad as San Francisco, but it's still up there.

[Jim Walsh]

As an Eastern Seaboard kid who loves the Big Apple (and has learned to despise anything associated with the Left Coast) I can only say, "Good-bye, Judy...and good riddance."

[Ken Shultz]

"She thinks her employees will be able to afford a better life in California?"

Most of the people I know who think their life is better in LA are from Mexico or the greater New York area.

[Larry A]

I'll stick with my publisher. She's in Austin, Texas.

[cdunlea]

Whatever. The grass is greener over the septic tank.