Um, I was unconscious when I plagiarized

The Washington Post adds a new excuse to the litany of plagiarists caught in the act.

Kaavya Viswanathan admitted yesterday she "borrowed" from two novels, "Sloppy Firsts" and "Second Helpings" by Megan F. McCafferty, to produce her first novel, about the daughter of Indian parents growing up in suburban New Jersey, the first in a two book half-million book deal.

In today's Harvard Crimson, which broke the story exposing the Harvard sophomore and first time novelist's blatant word theft, the author contributes yet another pathetically improbable rationalization for wordnapping: in a statement, Viswanathan says she "wasn't aware of how much I may have internalized the words" of the novelist she blatantly ripped off. 

Oops, says young author. (Here are two profiles, one from the Boston Globe, the other from the New York Times, before the literary shit hit the fan.) I'll just rewrite to get rid of those pesky word-thefts of mine. Why not? After all, her publisher at Little, Brown, describes her as a "incredibly hard-working writer and student." Not hard-working enough to write her own stuff apparently, but hey, she's just a kid at Harvard. I mean, give her a break.

And just to show how hard work is rewarded. "Sloppy Firsts" today ranks 1,437 on Amazon.com, while Mcafferty's "Second Helpings" ranks 3,399. Kaavya Viswanathan's McCafferty-dependent novel: 169.

Most intriguing, towards the bottom of today's Crimson coverage, is the role of a relatively new player in the synergistic (can you say "incestuous"?) world of  entertainment.

"Viswanathan worked with a book packaging company—17th Street Productions, which is owned by Alloy Entertainment—in the development of "Opal Mehta." Alloy, which shares the novel’s copyright with Viswanathan, is slated to produce the movie adaptation along with Contrafilm. DreamWorks has bought the rights to the film version of "Opal Mehta." "As has been previously reported, we helped Kaavya conceptualize and plot the book," Leslie Morgenstein, the president of Alloy Entertainment, wrote in an e-mail yesterday. "We are looking into the serious allegations detailed in the Crimson before commenting further."

I've got another book packaging idea for  "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life." Grind it into pulp and dump it in the trash.

Comments

[Lisa]

It's nice to hear someone tell it like it is. The first story I read about this really just seemed to take the person's word for it that it was an accident.

Doubtful to say the least!