Viswanathan's Apology

In The New York Times:

A day after Kaavya Viswanathan admitted copying parts of her chick-lit novel, "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life," from another writer's works, the publisher of the two books she borrowed from called her apology "troubling and disingenuous."

On Monday, Ms. Viswanathan, in an e-mail message, said that her copying from Megan McCafferty's "Sloppy Firsts" and "Second Helpings," both young adult novels published by Crown, a division of Random House, had been "unintentional and unconscious."

But in a statement issued today, Steve Ross, Crown's publisher, said that, "based on the scope and character of the similarities, it is inconceivable that this was a display of youthful innocence or an unconscious or unintentional act."

He said that there were more than 40 passages in Ms. Viswanathan's book "that contain identical language and/or common scene or dialogue structure from Megan McCafferty's first two books."

Comments

[Jonathan]

This case is plagiarism plane and simple. Similarities in plot and theme are one thing; copying entire sentences is another. Sentences are like fingerprints. Each one is unique. The idea that one writer could "unconsciously" reproduce another writer's exact diction and syntax is ludicrous. That's not the way that writing works.

So one more "writer" is caught with her hand in the cookie jar... Two things about this story seem unique, however.

1) Her writing "talents" were "discovered" by someone from the IvyWise counseling service, a private firm hired by her parents to help her get into Harvard. Just one more insidious little layer of the American class system previously hidden from view.

2) According the Harvard Independent, the book may have been padded or partly ghost written by an adolescent and "chick lit" outfit called 17th Street Productions. They may have added the lifted passages. So either she's a plagiarist or a fraud, or both.

See:
http://harvardindependent.com/ViewArticle.aspx?ArticleID=9906
http://harvardindependent.com/ViewArticle.aspx?ArticleID=9910
http://harvardindependent.com/ViewArticle.aspx?ArticleID=9921