How Harvard Student Gets Published and Gets Accused and Gets Press

[enamoured]

Since I was seven years old, I've wanted to write a novel. No matter what I dreamed of doing with my life, having at least one novel published has been my goal.

So yeah, I might be a little bit jealous of Kaavya Viswanathan--who got a book deal at seventeen and currently has a top 40 book on the bestseller's list. But I'm starting to think her writing career might be a bit at jeopardy because she's been accused of plagurising Megan McCafferty, author of Sloppy Firsts.

This accusation started when the Harvard Crimson compared passages from Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings and Viswanathan's debut novel How Opal Mehta got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life. The comparisons are pretty damning, especially if you've read and reread McCafferty's first two books over and over.

Now, before this news broke, I'd seen Opal Mehta in the "new fiction" section of Barnes and Noble, and I thought it seemed like an interesting read. I actually got the book now, and I'm starting to read it, and the slight paralells are quite obvious. Which is kind of sad, because honestly, what I've read so far is entertaining. I think that if the novel didn't have the elements from Megan McCafferty's books, it would be pretty good on its own. And all I keep thinking is that this is like the YA lit version of the James Frey/A Million Little Pieces things, only with fiction, and yes.

Comments

[verymandy.livejournal.com]

I just want to write a novel too.

[confused11390.livejournal.com]

I have heard about James Frey's Novel, but I haven't read it yet, how was it?

A Million Little Pieces, I mean. Besides being questionable non fiction.

[rajni.livejournal.com]

I saw the Opal Mehta book when I was geeking out in Waldenbooks. Those kind of books aren't really my thing but I looked it over because I'd never seen an Indian name on a mainstream book like that before, lol. Well, hope things work out with the scandal. The James Frey stuff was enough!

[bitter-sixteen.livejournal.com]

I can see how sometimes you can accidentally steal a phrase or a word that you've read (I admit to now saying Fake and Bake due to Charmed Thirds) but some of those passages are completely dead on. Which makes me think that she didn't do it because face it, if you're in Harvard, you're smart enough to figure out how to plagiarize without getting caught.

Million Little Pieces had a good idea behind it but I think that the format (no quotes, no paragraphing effort, no inventive language usage) was used because he could get away with it.

He wasn't a writer before and because the book was 'edgy' and about drug use, he got away with seriously writing a line and then hitting enter and writing another line.