<p>she got into the times magazine xD they praised her though and there was like only a tiny blurb on the scandal</p>
<p>But she lied in previous interviews and said she read serious literature like Balzac, and that nothing she read was a source for her book. Her story is just plain inconsistent. I had the pleasure a couple weeks ago of reading the novel The</a> Chosen, by Chaim</a> Potok. I had last read that book as assigned reading in high school more than thirty-three years ago. I still remembered distinctly several incidents in the book, and I still remembered what book they came from. I would never in a million years write like Potok (that is, I would never adopt his expression) were I to write a novel on a similar topic. I think the Random House representative got it exactly right last week: Ms. Viswanathan's excuse for her misdeeds was completely incredible, and not helpful in resolving the issues she has with the publishers whose copyright she has infringed. </p>
<p>P.S. Read Potok's novel The Chosen--you'll be in for a treat.</p>
<br>
<p>P.S. Read Potok's novel The Chosen--you'll be in for a treat.</p>
<br>
<p>Have to echo this. Probably one of the three best novels I've read in my life.</p>
<p>This is probably for the best. Especially for Kaavya. (It will also help the value of Byerly's investment.)</p>
<p>Excerpt:</p>
<p>Kaavya Viswanathans publisher said that the Harvard sophomores recently-released novelwhich has been dogged by plagiarism allegationswill not be re-released, and that Viswanathans two-book contract has been cancelled. </p>
<p>In a statement released today, the publisher of Little, Brown, and Company, Michael Pietsch 78, said: "Little, Brown and Company will not be publishing a revised edition of `How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life' by Kaavya Viswanathan, nor will we publish the second book under contract.</p>
<p>Comments from other writers (confirmed to be genuine):
even with photographic memory, one has to consciously RECALL info that was read.
Such info does not just "bubble up" as one's OWN ideas or writings!
Kaavya's claim is dishonest.</p>
<p>In addition, in previous newspaper interviews prior to her book,
she claimed that she read NO related books for inspiration or ideas for her own book.
This was revealed to be totally untrue,
since then she acknowledged to have been a big fan of Megan McCafferty and had read McCafferty's books "multiple times" while in HS.</p>
<p>Does it ever end??</p>
<p>This is now the sixth book she and her "book packaging" company Alloy Entertainment plagirized from. Unreal.</p>
<p>This is pretty ridiculous.
It would probably be faster to write her own paragraphs than to cull through six different books for sentences that would fit her story.</p>
<p>These other books, did they have the same book-packaging company?</p>
<p>Has anybody ever read The Great Automatic Grammatisator, a short story by Roald Dahl? It's about a machine that writes novels, and authors sell their names to be written on the byline. In the end, 70% of books were written by this machine. One of my school's blogs has been keeping track of this Opal Mehta thing and someone suggested that perhaps a machine wrote the book. WWWAAYYY farfetched, but interesting theory. I mean, a little bit of Indian culture, a little bit of chicklit, a little bit of girl trying to get into college....</p>
<p>lilsmileycolumbian, machines (shaped liked big swinging kaleidoscopes) write the novels in Orwell's "1984," too.</p>
<p>I wonder if Dahl "internalized" that plot device after reading Orwell!</p>
<p>I think although plagiarism is very bad and should be punished. At times I wonder, what happens when you read an AMAZING book and you love it so much, you eventually internalize it and as you write your own story, you end up putting things together that "sound nice" because you know it does (because it comes from another book). I think some of these things are getting out of hand. There are many things that I believe are just a coincidence. I do believe she did plagiarize, but the multiple other cases that have come out...is just an addendum to the crisis. I also believe in forgiveness so I think that she should be given a chance to re-write. Her plot is not similar and I think plots are one of the most important things in a book.</p>
<p>Yet again, I am floored by the stupidity of some people. </p>
<p>The reason this is such a big deal is that HER PLOT IS EXACTLY THE SAME AS MCAFFERTY'S WORK. As are her characters. And the action within the book. And virtually everything else. As I stated before, the passages are just the icing on the cake.</p>
<p>A nice little cut-and-paste masterpiece from six different works. Awesome.</p>
<p>And five different authors;</p>
<p>McCafferty
Kinsella
Rushdie
Cabot
Hidier</p>
<p>The plot similarity is the least of the problem. Ninety percent of all YA chick lit novels have the same plot and the same theme of a girl blossoming. What makes this egregious is the theft of passage after passage after passage after passage....</p>
<p>Copyright law doesn't protect plots: the famous statement (which was satirized by Mark Twain) is that there are only a few different plots in all of fiction. But copyright law does protect expression, that is particular arrangements of words, and that protection is especially strong for works of fiction. That's why the publisher of the infringing book had to withdraw it from sales channels.</p>
<p>Some of those sections seem a bit... well... not copyrighted. Maybe it's just me, but I thought talking about food was a universal back-to-culture thing? I mean I'll accept that she plagiarized, but I can't believe she did it from so many books... it would have been terribly pointless... let's give her some degree of a benefit of the doubt and allow that it could have been "subconscious internalization" while researching for the novel?</p>
<p>lackadaisy-</p>
<p>Have you taken the trouble to read anything in the last few pages of this thread? Or did you just decide to instantly post a reply, without thinking twice?</p>
<p>She didn't write the novel. Her "book-packaging company", Alloy Entertainment, did. They loved her for her looks and marketability, but decided that her original topic was too dark. They specifically marketed the topic based on what teenage girls like, and to that end, had a team of ghost writers write the actual book. </p>
<p>The language used in the book didn't match that used by a teenage girl. It's hard not to see why. </p>
<p>
One's thoughts turn to Kaavya Viswanathan, the Harvard sophomore caught in an act of plagiarism whose literary career appears to have been as artificially manufactured as anything that Orwell ever imagined. She first made news because, at age 17 with no writing experience, she was given a $500,000 advance for two novels that she would presumably write.....
</p>
<p>hehe has anyone notice how the google generated ads on the left of this discussion thread are now mostly about publishing?</p>
<p>Quote: "She didn't write the novel. Her "book-packaging company", Alloy Entertainment, did. ...They ... had a team of ghost writers write the actual book"</p>
<p>I think I read all the links on this thread, and I see no definitive statement that she did not write the book. The degree of involvement of the packaging company is not defined...it's clear they hammered out the topic with or for her, but please show me where you come to such definitive conclusions about the actual writing. My impression is that the role of the packaging company is variable.</p>
<p>And by the way, if she didn't write it, then she didn't plagerize. And the anger in your posts seems kind of over the top...why is this so personal for you?</p>
<p>Yeah, she has already admitted that SHE wrote the passages that "internalized" the copyrighted words of another author, so the working inference here about this ever-shifting story is that she copied the other books that were copied to form the text of the Opal Mehta book. There are several threads about this on CC, but the thread in which there is the most posting by persons who work in the publishing industry makes clear that HER responsibility is to ensure that the book doesn't include infringing content, as it did.</p>
<p>The Harvard Crimson is calling for her to be investigated through the Harvard disciplinary process for students. </p>