<p>Recently a Harvard Sophomore, Kavya Vishwanthan was criticised for copying similar passages from to books publuished by McCafferty and was made to publicly apologise. The book she wrote, "How Opal Mehta got kissed, got wild and Got a life" though had a different storyline.</p>
<p>Now what i ask is was this is a justifiable act?
I think it was justifiable becuase firstly, thestory was different. She looked upon McCafferty as an inspiration and thus having a similar writing style is perfectly acceptable. As fopr lifting of certain passage, 6 in all, tho some sources its as high as 30, is natural because she is a first time writer. She has an individual style but will obviously try to followr certtain things her idol did.</p>
<p>I think this issue was blown up by the media too much. Instead of nurturing creativity, its stifling it. </p>
<p>I read in a newspaper that, although the story was different, there were as many as 40 pages copied word for word. I find that rather appaling and I hope that the young lady has learned an important lesson.</p>
<p>despite all of that evidence, what's even harder to believe is that a girl that got into Harvard was foolish enough to do something like that and not expect to be caught. If she didn't know what she was doing, she has an excellent memory to use those exact phrases.</p>
<p>WOW. I just looked at that wikipedia article. That's heavy plagerism. And a LOT of it too!</p>
<pre><code>* McCafferty's book, page 6: "Sabrina was the brainy Angel. Yet another example of how every girl had to be one or the other: Pretty or smart."
Viswanathan's novel, page 39: "Moneypenny was the brainy female character. Yet another example of how every girl had to be one or the other: smart or pretty."
</code></pre>
<p>"I am a huge fan of her work and can honestly say that any phrasing similarities between her works and mine were completely unintentional and unconscious."
....Right... I agree with brand182 - she must've had excellent memory. Even if it was the excellent memory, I think her creativity was stifiled already.
Hopefully, she'll learn from her mistake and get over it.</p>
<p>Well, from what I've read, her defense is she didn't mean to plagarize, but since she read McCafferty's book and had a "photographic memory", when she wrote her book the words she wrote down "weren't really hers but seemed to be coming from her mind". </p>
<p>I find this hard to believe, but considering that people who attend probably have a photographic memory anyway, I still think that it counts as plagarism, the passages are almost identical in some places.</p>
<p>I think that the author was (is) an avid reader and she must have loved Megan McCafferty's books (I did). Having said this, it is likely that she picked up those books and read them again and again--I have done so with other books, especially when I'm really bored and I can't go to Borders for whatever reason. In that way she started to internalize some of her favorite passages (don't shoot me here; I can honestly repeat some lines from the Traveling Pants books because I have read them more than once <em>is ashamed</em>). So it would have been very easy for her to weave these lines accidentally into her own story.</p>
<p>I highly doubt it was an accident. If one checks out her past history, a professor has questioned her work before. If one loves an author, one knows where the material comes from--hence making it more difficult to copy it. In addition, I don't think anyone was against nurturing creativity. It takes zero creativity to take a book you like and rewrite with a spin. There's another book similar to hers called "Born Confused"...that has been cited by some southern journalists. Clearly, this young lady borrowed phrases from other authors, thought she could add her own touch to them, and get away with it. It may not be completely her fault, but by being invovled in this, she does have some fault. 40 pages do not happen by accident. 1 or 2 pages, maybe...even a chapter...okay...40 pages? Please...</p>
<p>to the OP: look up kaavya on wikipedia. the wikipedia article has side-by-side comparisons of kaavya's words and the words she plagiarized (it also has the sources so if you don't trust wikipedia then you can go to the original sources)</p>
<p>example:
Sample passages
McCafferty's book, page 7: "Bridget is my age and lives across the street. For the first twelve years of my life, these qualifications were all I needed in a best friend. But that was before Bridget's braces came off and her boyfriend Burke got on, before Hope and I met in our seventh grade Honors classes."
Viswanathan's novel, page 14: "Priscilla was my age and lived two blocks away. For the first fifteen years of my life, those were the only qualifications I needed in a best friend. We had bonded over our mutual fascination with the abacus in a playgroup for gifted kids. But that was before freshman year, when Priscilla's glasses came off, and the first in a long string of boyfriends got on."</p>
<p>Photographic memory internalizing some of her favorite passages?</p>
<p>What she said is complete bs, and she knows it. She basically wrote her book from several different books, one of which was the primary source. That's pretty sad. She can't actually create a story on her own. </p>
<p>My 2nd grade cousin's story should be published if her's can be....and he didn't even plagarize.</p>
<p>And what happened with the publishers? The editors? They are at fault also.</p>
<p>Oh, I went to the Wikipedia article the other day and somehow found myself on a blog titled Sepia Mutiny (I think that was the name) where there was a pretty heated discussion going on.</p>
<p>One of the oft-repeated points was that while there was plagiarism, it's not necessarily clear who did it. The original story was darker than what people thought sellable, so it was sent to a book packager to be fleshed out. Book packaging sometimes involves "ghostwriting", meaning that you might send in a plot, and someone will write the story using that plot. It seems to be very common in the genre Vishwanthan was writing in. As it's not clear how much the book packaging company handled the book, it may or may not be Vishwanthan who plagiarized. (Apologies if I got some of the details wrong.)</p>
<p>Another point made was that if she was such an avid reader and had a photographic memory, there should've been a wider number of sources from which she plagiarized. However, since almost all the instances of plagiarism are from McCafferty's books, it's likely that the plagiarism was intentional.</p>
<p>It takes awhile to read, so I just highlighted some of the points that caught my interest.</p>
<p>As for my personal feelings, I don't think she should be expelled from Harvard. It may have been that being an inexperienced writer, she didn't know how to deal with the stress of college and publishing a book and made some bad decisions along the way. Maybe she really did do it all unintentionally. In any case, from now on, the papers that she turns in should be checked carefully, of course, but I'd give this girl another chance.</p>