We Don' Need No Stinking Ethics!

5/2/06


In the May 2nd 2005 edition, The New York Sun, among others, reported the windfall and unbelievable good fortune of Harvard freshman Kaavya Viswanathan. (pictured at left) She had just signed a two-book (fiction) deal with the prestigious publishing house Little, Brown and Co to the mind-numbing tune of $500,000. Almost exactly one year later things arent looking so swift for dear Kaavya.

PLAGIARISM!

Looks pretty scary in screaming-bold Georgia font, doesn't it? See, here's the problem: Writing is hard. I know, you wouldn't think so to read a John Saul novel; according to some writers all you need do is re-hash the same story over and over with different character names and locations. But trust me, it is hard work. Fiction, doubly so. Just about anyone with a middle-school education and an attention span longer than that of an autistic goldfish can write the sarcastic, essay-style B.S. I churn out at a feverish pace, but if columns and articles are jumping jacks, a fictional novel is pulling a city bus filled with molten lead across country with your teeth while being repeatedly stung in the face by angry, Africanized bees. Hard.

The problem with novel writing is that someone else has almost certainly done it better. Kaavya Viswanathan understood this, and apparently felt that Megan McCafferty was the one who had said it best when Viswanathan just plain stole chunks of text from McCaffertys books Sloppy Firsts, and Second Helpings for her own novel, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life.

Both books are about a young woman struggling into adulthood while attending an Ivy League college. Had the similarities ended there I would be quite the dickhead for bringing it up. But no, what the literary community at large seems to have stuck in their craw is shit like this, reported in The Harvard Crimson:

From page 6 of McCaffertys first novel (Sloppy Firsts): "Sabrina was the brainy Angel. Yet another example of how every girl had to be one or the other: Pretty or smart. Guess which one I got. Youll see where its gotten me"

From page 39 of Viswanathans novel: "Moneypenny was the brainy female character. Yet another example of how every girl had to be one or the other: smart or pretty. I had long resigned myself to category one, and as long as it got me to Harvard, I was happy. Except, it hadnt gotten me to Harvard. Clearly, it was time to switch to category two."

Maybe I'm being too harsh. After all, the little overworked dear did switch the words "pretty or smart" to "smart or pretty." That almost seems like kind of a "fuck you" doesn't it? Viswanathan's defense to the 29 instances in which her novel strongly resembles McCafferty's was to say that she was a huge fan of McCafferty and

"I wasn't aware of how much I may have internalized Ms. McCafferty's words."

Uh-huh. I am a big Stephen King fan, but I can't subconsciously retain word-for-word sentences even from the novels of his I've read repeatedly. That said, were I capable of it, I doubt I could introduce even one sentence of his nearly verbatim into my work, let alone 29, without having some inkling of the fact that Im a big, fat phony. Want another couple of sparkling examples? I thought so.

From page 237 of McCaffertys first novel: "Finally, four major department stores and 170 specialty shops later, we were done."

From page 51 of Viswanathans novel: "Five department stores, and 170 specialty shops later, I was sick of listening to her hum along to Alicia Keys...."

And...

From page 68 of McCaffertys second novel (Second Helpings): "Omigod! shrieked Sara, taking a pink tube top emblazoned with a glittery Playboy bunny out of her shopping bag."

From page 51 of Viswanathans novel: "...I was sick of listening to her hum along to Alicia Keys, and worn out from resisting her efforts to buy me a pink tube top emblazoned with a glittery Playboy bunny."

Did you catch that? Notice that the first example is from McCafferty's first book, while the second is from her sophomore effort. If we're to believe Viswanathan, her internalization of the two books manifested itself into smashing two nearly identical sentences from two separate books into one single artistic abortion in her own. C'mon, what are the odds of copying both the relatively unused words "emblazoned" and "glittery" subconsciously? Probably about the same as me being invited to referee a cooking-oil wrestling match between Wilford Brimley and Bea Arthur. (Egh...what the hell made me think of that?!)

Obviously with half a million bucks at stake the poor lass is never going to admit to plagiarism, and her publishers and agent have a vested interest in her just pretending to be a barely conscious idiot instead of a lying, cheating, creatively vapid asshole. Either way, the real tragedy is this whole goddamn fiasco will undoubtedly sell more books, of which future printings are to be changed in order to eliminate the huge passages in which the bitch stole someone elses imagination. For those of you dear readers who would like to read more of the numerous and hilarious examples of panic-induced plagiarism, I invite you to check out the article by The Harvard Crimson here.

What an asshole. Therefore, I nominate Kaavya Viswanathan for April's

Douche-bag
of the Month!



Sources:

The Harvard Crimson :: News :: Examples of Similar Passages Between Viswanathan's Book and McCafferty's Two Novels

The Harvard Crimson :: News :: Students Novel Faces Plagiarism Controversy