Plagiarism will out . . .
Maybe you all recall Everette's post regarding Kaavya Viswanathan, the sophomore superstar at Harvard and her amazing success with _How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life_. Serious allegations of plagiarism have been leveled at her, spearheaded by her school's newspaper, _The Havard Crimson_. I heard a report on public radio this morning coming to work. The evidence I heard in the passages compared was pretty damning. I'm sad for what is a clearly bright and talented woman. Maybe we VCers aren't such slackers after all.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article359756.ece
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article359756.ece
posted by Anonymous at 5:29 PM
6 Comments:
I am disheartened.
'How Opal Mehta Got Kissed,' Then Got Pulled.
All Things Considered, April 28, 2006 · The coming-of-age novel by Kaavya Viswanathan, a Harvard sophomore, has been recalled from bookstores after numerous passages were revealed to have been plagiarized. Karen Holt, deputy editor of Publishers Weekly, says withdrawing a book is not unprecedented, but it's extremely rare. Melissa Block talks with Holt.
Audio recording of story:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5369768
05/02/2006
Well, even more revelations of "lifting" from other books were revealed today; also announced that Little, Brown is pulling her book and cancelling the contract on the second; and the paper she worked for as an intern, is reviewing all her stories as well.
I don't know about any of you, but I could not swear that phrases or constructions I've read over the years haven't accidentally found their way into my writing. to see the feeding frenzy on this is a little scary.
i don't know if this young woman intentionally plagerized. She may have thought changing a few words in a phrase was sufficient. Giving her the benefit of the doubt, I can see where the flow of her prose may have recalled a phrase that worked well, but did she go back to teh source material and say, "Oh yeah, here's that passage I love so much, I'll just change a few words and it'll be okay"?
Someone has said that we stand on the shoulders of giants (before Hawking did) a friend studied with Don Barthelme and you can see the influence he had on my friends writing. With such a distinctive style, would that be considered plagerism?
I also wonder what role the Frey scandle had on this. Would it have even appeared on teh radar screen if his poor judgement not been revealed so publicly?
Does this now mean we have to carefully consider whether every phrase in our writing is original to us? Will our publishers have little scrivener editors entering phrases into Google's Book Search before signing off on our contracts? I don't know, but I'm sure I don't want to live in a world where the relationship between and writer and his publisher is more contentious than it already is.
Thoughts anyone?
-dg
Kaavya Viswanathan and James Frey are two different problems.
Kaavya Viswanathan has been accused of lifting a lot of work from other writer's fiction and presenting it as her own fiction, with only slight alterations. It's true, there is nothing new under the sun, that we stand on the shoulders of giants. But there is a point when we are not riffing on someone's work or vibe, but simply stealing it. Viswanathan hasn't been penalized if the allegations are true, because she simply lost that which she didn't deserve in the first place. Like Muddy Waters said, "Can't lose what you never had." She might be penalized if they came after her in a criminal or civil suit.
Frey wrote his own stuff as far as I know, but he billed fiction as nonfiction and misrepresented the nature of his own original work. Frey, like Binjamin Wilkomirsky, Rigoberta Menchu, and Tawana Brawley all essentially claim emotional truth trumps factual truth—twisted as that is, truth is in there somewhere. So, no matter how false their true accounts are, there is an emotional truth running through it somewhere and for these folks that's good enough. It is an angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin kind of problem. But it ain't intellectual theft.
Frey was apparently up front with his publisher and the publisher allegedly made the choice to bill as nonfiction. Also he did come clean with the public and his book is out there doing well. He may live to publish again.
Viswanathan may not do so well because it would appear she wasn't so up front with her publisher. Also this is a huge embarrassment for her publisher as well as a considerable financial loss. Not talking getting into the cutout bin too early either—this is a serious chunk of dough going into the shredder.
Kaavya Viswanathan and James Frey are two different problems.
Kaavya Viswanathan has been accused of lifting a lot of work from other writer's fiction and presenting it as her own fiction, with only slight alterations. It's true, there is nothing new under the sun, that we stand on the shoulders of giants. But there is a point when we are not riffing on someone's work or vibe, but simply stealing it. Viswanathan hasn't been penalized if the allegations are true, because she simply lost that which she didn't deserve in the first place. Like Muddy Waters said, "Can't lose what you never had." She might be penalized if they came after her in a criminal or civil suit.
Frey wrote his own stuff as far as I know, but he billed fiction as nonfiction and misrepresented the nature of his own original work. Frey, like Binjamin Wilkomirsky, Rigoberta Menchu, and Tawana Brawley all essentially claim emotional truth trumps factual truth—twisted as that is, truth is in there somewhere. So, no matter how false their true accounts are, there is an emotional truth running through it somewhere and for these folks that's good enough. It is an angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin kind of problem. But it ain't intellectual theft.
Frey was apparently up front with his publisher and the publisher allegedly made the choice to bill as nonfiction. Also he did come clean with the public and his book is out there doing well. He may live to publish again.
Viswanathan may not do so well because it would appear she wasn't so up front with her publisher. Also this is a huge embarrassment for her publisher as well as a considerable financial loss. Not talking getting into the cutout bin too early either—this is a serious chunk of dough going into the shredder.
Ron and David,
EXCELLENT Viswanathan / Frey threads!
Kiss and pull. Influences can be a tricky flow and rinse.
No wonder I get such a thrill reading a piece, or checking out the screenwriter of a movie with a story that's NEVER been done before. . . or with such an imb(r)edded signature.
Risky. Tight. Rope.
Can plagiarism become a plague?
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