In all fairness, it’s not Strawberry Saroyan‘s fault that her article about Judith Regan for Los Angeles magazine is appearing long after everybody else has weighed in on the subject. And since Angeleno readers probably don’t all have subscriptions to New York, Vanity Fair, the New York Times, the New York Daily News, and the Wall Street Journal, and the Los Angeles Times coverage never rose to zone-flooding levels, the stuff that strikes those of us in publishing circles who’ve gossiped ourselves out on the subject as old hat may be fresher for left-coasters. That said, there’s enough tidbits sprinkled in the back half of the feature to keep New Yorkers interested. Saroyan does have new “I had dinner with Judith Regan” stories to tell, she probes why Regan’s television aspirations didn’t kick into high gear following her move to Hollywood, and she offers a strong analysis of the trends within ReganBooks that led to the OJ deal.
Which leads to perhaps the most interesting angle on the story, summed up in Saroyan’s big questions: “How had the woman who’s made it her business to go right up to the line of popular taste—but never cross it—gotten it so wrong this time? And did it have anything to do with her move to Los Angeles?” Frankly, you could easily challenge the very premise of the first question; even with all that vocal moral outrage swirling around it, If I Did It was doing well enough in Amazon.com pre-orders to justify Regan’s interest in publishing the book, and who knows what might have happened if News Corp. hadn’t flinched? As for the second question, that makes for plenty of armchair psychology and ruminating about the allure of fame. “Regan has been starring in her own show since childhood,” that sort of thing, building up to a climax where the once and future publisher may well have been on the verge of starring in her own reality show and/or producing a fictionalized version of her life.