<p>Once again The Harvard Crimson breaks the story: </p>
<p><a href="http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=513204%5B/url%5D">http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=513204</a> </p>
<p>I think it will be prudent for my children to learn how to write ON THEIR OWN without the help of book packagers and application doctors.</p>
<p>This is really getting ridiculous;</p>
<p>This happens to teenagers, when you read a book you REALLY love, I mean REALLY love, you're itching to write a story of your own and because teenagers aren't usually great writers with incredible creativity, the story you write will end up similar in style and content as the book you've read and loved. So I guess Kaavya read the book, loved it and just wrote something in her free time, but her counsellor happened to read it and there was pressure for her to complete the book quickly and everything, that it actually got published. I guess everything just happened too quickly for her to realise that she'd actually internalized so much.</p>
<p>but still, considering the HUGE publicity this is getting, she's dead meat.</p>
<p>
[quote]
This happens to teenagers, when you read a book you REALLY love, I mean REALLY love, you're itching to write a story of your own and because teenagers aren't usually great writers with incredible creativity, the story you write will end up similar in style and content as the book you've read and loved.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>In a word, no, not like it happened here. Teenagers who expect to get into Harvard should know better than to be that derivative when writing a work of fiction.</p>
<p>what responsibility lies on the shoulders of the publishers and editors? do they not run checks for plagarism? they can't just sit on the profits and wash their hands off any responsibility to the author's misdeeds! there has to be SOMEONE in the publishing loop who's gonna validate the originality (or, as in the case of 'million little pieces', the validity) of the work submitted.</p>
<p>Hm, looks like my original hardcover copy may become a collector's item. I wonder if these will start to sell on eBay...</p>
<p>^^I thought about that back when the story first broke. I considered buying a copy before they were pulled, anticipating that they may become a collector's item. But in the end I didn't buy one because I didn't want to help enrich the plagiarist.</p>
<p>Currently listed on e-bay at $89 !! I'm glad I bought 3 copies on the last day at the Coop - anticipating this very development!</p>
<p>I have a theory:</p>
<p>Kaavya didn't really write the book - she merely came up with the concept and the book packaging people wrote the story. Then when the first allegations of plagerism were made (at that time there weren't so many passages cited), instead of admitting she hadn't actually written the book, she came up with the "unconscious internalization" idea. Once the accusations started snowballing, she had no choice but to stick to her story, lest she be branded an outright liar. Probably some hack writer at Alloy is responsible for the actual plagerism. Either way, bad judgement on her part.</p>
<p>Since multiple sources are apparently being copied, maybe it's time to stop viewing Kaavya as a plagiarist and instead regard her as an anthology editor -- compiling the works of several authors into a single volume. ;-)</p>
<p>MSNBC is now reporting apparent plagarism from yet another book, "Can You Keep a Secret" by Sophie Kinsella.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12594078/%5B/url%5D">http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12594078/</a></p>
<p>I agree with Vango's theory. My only deviation from that theory is that perhaps the "hack writer", or a stable of several "hack writers", at Alloy are not responsible for plagarism, but are responsible for sections of several other "chick-lit" books, re-using their own, repeated, boiler-plate paragraphs in these books of the same genre. </p>
<p>My other theory is that if someone starts to compare several of these chick-lit books (hardly great literature, IMHO), not just "Opal Mehta...", there are probably numerous passages between all of them which are the same. Heck, if these books sell so well, why not just change the title, change the character names, change a few plot and setting issues, and just re-sell the same book with a new package. Perhaps Alloy has several hack writers that re-use the same stuff over and over again.</p>
<p>I think that Kaavya was just a front with a backstory -- an attractive, articulate girl, a Harvard student, a "wonderkind." And the adults who have packaged her are letting her twist in the wind, rather than expose themselves for the shills that they are. And shame on Kaavya for letting herself get manipulated like this.</p>
<p>And, oh by the way, I DESPISE the whole concept of parents paying a whooping $30,000 to try to buy their kids into college with phony resumes, phony images, and phony applications. I would hope that the Harvard admissions office, and all other admissions offices, could see through this phony junk.</p>
<p>Guys, are your copies autographed? There are a lot of cheap imitations out there.</p>
<p>Has she been kicked out of Harvard yet?</p>
<p>This article, "Did Opal Author Plagarize -- or Was It Her Handlers?" makes many of the points I was trying to make in post 152, only the article expresses those ideas much better than I did, and the author is a much better writer than I am.</p>
<p>I'm not going to plagarize -- read the Harvard Independent article.</p>
<p>I've wondered the same thing. The Crimson article that broke the story reported that, when Kaavya was reached on her cell phone for comment, she said, "I have no idea what you are talking about." The "internalization" excuse came a couple of days later, presumably after she had been prepped by her handlers.</p>
<p>There is more:</p>
<p>I am really beginning to wonder about whether their's some weird truth to the "photographic memory" explanation of Viswanathan's. (maybe she didn't "come up" with it right away, because she was initially truly unaware of these similarities when first contacted.) It's hard for me to believe that anyone, no matter how pressured or desperate for ideas, would consciously plagerize all over the place like that, from so many sources. The mind is a very strange thing...I think she may literally have had these phrases imprinted in her brain in some way after years of reading this genre--and having an unusual degree of photographic memory, ---and really believed when she wrote them, that they were her own. I also say this because, after seeing her interview and reading about her from classmates who knew her well, the picture of a completely deceiving, amoral person does not ring true for me.</p>
<p>I also do not believe that her "packagers" would be stupid enough to plagerize to this degree. The unbelievable similarity between so many of the examples and Viswanathan's is such that it seems highly unlikely that an experienced ghost writer wouldn't know how to disguise imitations of this sort.</p>
<p>She certainly is an avid reader from what was reported in today's HC.</p>