Kaavya Viswanathan Accused Of Plagiarizing Meg Cabot's Work
Posted on May 3, 2006
In light of the new revelations that Kaavya Viswanathan apparently also plagiarized the work of bestselling author Meg Cabot (that makes three authors, if you're keeping score at home), Little, Brown has thrown up its hands in dismay and sensibly cancelled Ms. Viswanathan's two book contract. The publisher will not be issuing a revised version of How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life, no doubt fearing that the rest of the book will turn out to have been cobbled together using passages from every author from Nora Roberts to Helen Fielding.
A report in the New York Times says the plagiarism was first reported by The Harvard Crimson:
Tuesday's decision caps a stunning downfall for the 19-year-old Viswanathan, a Harvard sophomore with a reported six-figure book deal whose novel came out in March to widespread attention.Note to aspiring plagiarists: in the Internet Age all plagiarists eventually get caught.*****
The Harvard Crimson, alerted by reader e-mails, reported Tuesday on its Web site that "Opal Mehta" contained passages similar to Meg Cabot's 2000 novel, "The Princess Diaries." The New York Times also reported comparable material in Viswanathan's novel and Sophie Kinsella's "Can You Keep a Secret?"
In Cabot's "The Princess Diaries," published by HarperCollins, the following passage appears on page 12: "There isn't a single inch of me that hasn't been pinched, cut, filed, painted, sloughed, blown dry, or moisturized. ... Because I don't look a thing like Mia Thermopolis. Mia Thermopolis never had fingernails. Mia Thermopolis never had blond highlights."
In Viswanathan's book, page 59 reads: "Every inch of me had been cut, filed, steamed, exfoliated, polished, painted, or moisturized. I didn't look a thing like Opal Mehta. Opal Mehta didn't own five pairs of shoes so expensive they could have been traded in for a small sailboat."
