How Kaayva Viswanathan Plagiarized, Lied And Still Doesn't Seem To Get It
The plagiarism scandal of Harvard undegraduate scandal is heating up. Kaayva Viswanathan, the Harvard undergrad whose parents paid $10,000 to an admissions service to help her get into the Ivy League school, was then sent to book packager 17th Street Productions to help her write a novel (no word yet who paid for that expensive bit of help). She landed a $500,000 two book contract with Little, Brown. The first book published was How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life, which got good reviews. So what't the problem? Well, apparently, she copied major parts of her book from a Random House author and she just got caught. She then apologized, like that would be the end of it. Guess again.
Teenage author Kaayva Viswanathan has acknowledged taking material from fellow novelist Megan McCafferty, but says the borrowing was an accident. McCafferty's publisher doesn't believe her.
"We think there are simply too many many instances of 'borrowing' for this to have been unintentional," Steve Ross, senior vice president and publisher of the Crown Publishing Group, told The Associated Press on Tuesday. He said lawyers for the two publishers have been in discussion.
Viswanathan's publisher, Little, Brown and Company, and her agent, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, did not immediately return calls from the AP seeking comment.
Viswanathan, a 19-year-old sophomore at Harvard University, was just 17 when she signed a reported six-figure, two-book deal with Little, Brown. Her first novel, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life, came out in March to widespread publicity. DreamWorks has already acquired film rights.
But readers of McCafferty who had read Viswanathan spotted similarities to McCafferty's books, which include Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings, and alerted McCafferty, who in turn notified her publisher. Examples of questionable passages were published Sunday on the website of the Harvard Crimson.
Viswanathan issued a statement Monday apologizing for her borrowings, saying that she was a "huge fan" of McCafferty and "wasn't aware of how much I may have internalized Ms. McCafferty's words." She promised to revise her book, a process Little, Brown says has already started.
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On Tuesday, Crown issued a statement saying that Viswanathan's apology was "deeply troubling and disingenuous.
"We have documented more than 40 passages from Kaavya Viswanathan's recent publication ... that contain identical language and/or common scene or dialogue structure from Megan McCafferty's first two books. This extensive taking from Ms. McCafferty's books is nothing less than an act of literary identity theft."
News flash: saying you're sorry and saying you'll revise the 40+ passages you plagiarized from another author doesn't make it ok. In an interview she was asked what books inspired her novel; she replied that no one else's book inspired her. From her own statements and the evidence of the identical passages in the two books, it appears clear that she plagiarized and then she lied to cover it up. And now she's going to have to pay the price.
