Debut Author Apologizes for Similarities

She calls echoes to a 2001 young adult novel an unintended mistake.

By Robin Abcarian, Times Staff Writer
April 26, 2006

When Steve Ross, publisher and senior vice president of Crown Publishers and Three Rivers Press, learned that a first-time teenage novelist might have borrowed a few passages from the works of one of his own authors, Megan McCafferty, his first instinct was to consider it "a youthful indiscretion."

After all, the alleged transgressor, Kaavya Viswanathan, a 19-year-old Harvard sophomore, was being heralded as a kind of literary prodigy, a kid with a voice who'd scored a two-book deal worth close to $500,000 while still in high school. Who'd want to squelch that?

But as Ross' staffers compared the newcomer's novel, "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life," with two of McCafferty's novels, he became alarmed and then angry when they turned up 40 passages in "Opal Mehta" that seemed borrowed or lifted directly from McCafferty's two popular young adult novels, "Sloppy Firsts" and "Second Helpings."

"This is literary identity theft," Ross said Tuesday. McCafferty, he said, "feels that something fundamental was taken from her."

Viswanathan's Boston-area phone number was disconnected, but through her publisher, Little, Brown & Co., she apologized Monday in a written statement, saying she had made an unintentional mistake.

"When I was in high school," she wrote, "I read and loved two wonderful novels by Megan McCafferty, 'Sloppy Firsts' and 'Second Helpings,' which spoke to me in a way few other books did. Recently, I was very surprised and upset to learn that there are similarities between some passages in my novel … and passages in these books…. I sincerely apologize to Megan McCafferty and to any who feel they have been misled by these unintentional errors on my part."

Michael Pietsch, senior vice president and publisher of Little, Brown, a division of Time Warner Book Group, did not return phone calls, nor did Viswanathan's William Morris agent, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh. Earlier, Pietsch had expressed his support for Viswanathan, saying he was "confident that we will learn that any similarities in phrasing were unintentional." He described her as "a decent, serious and incredibly hard-working writer and student."

Late Tuesday, Pietsch issued a second statement, in which he reaffirmed his support for the young author. "She has apologized, publicly and profusely, for any difficulties that may have come from her actions," he wrote. "She will revise her novel to remove any inappropriate similarities, and we will reissue it with those changes at the earliest opportunity.

"We believe that this is an unfortunate but honest mistake, and we intend to give Ms. Viswanathan every opportunity to correct the situation. We will not reprint the novel until those changes have been made. Like Random House" — the parent of Crown — "we look forward to a speedy and amicable resolution of this matter, and we look forward to hearing from them."

But McCafferty's publisher may not be assuaged.

"It's worth noting here that if they were to make the revisions to the text as they have publicly promised," Ross said, "that is a process that would consume months, and during that time this original version would still be selling in the bookstores."

"Our lawyers are reviewing historical precedents" and weighing options, including the demand that "Opal Mehta," which had a first run of 100,000 copies and has been optioned by DreamWorks, be yanked from shelves, Ross said.

McCafferty was not available to comment.

Fans of McCafferty, who alerted her via her website, pointed out the similarities two weeks ago, Ross said. The charges were first reported Sunday by the Harvard Crimson student newspaper on its website.

The scandal comes just after the publication of McCafferty's third novel for young adults, "Charmed Thirds," which hit bookstores April 11, five days after "Opal Mehta" came out.

McCafferty's novels "Sloppy Firsts" and "Second Helpings" follow the ups and downs of Jessica Darling, a New Jersey teenager intent on being accepted to Columbia. "Opal Mehta" is about an Indian American girl in New Jersey who is intent on being accepted to Harvard.

In an e-mail, Crown presented 40 alleged similarities between the two texts. An example:

On Page 7 of "Sloppy Firsts," published in 2001:

Bridget is my age and lives across the street. For the first twelve years of my life, these qualifications were all I needed in a best friend. But that was before Bridget's braces came off and her boyfriend Burke got on, before Hope and I met in our seventh grade Honors classes.

On Page 14 of Viswanathan's novel:

Priscilla was my age and lived two blocks away. For the first fifteen years of my life, those were the only qualifications I needed in a best friend. We had bonded over our mutual fascination with the abacus in a playgroup for gifted kids. But that was before freshman year, when Priscilla's glasses came off, and the first in a long string of boyfriends came on.

Ross said he thought that an article in the Newark Star-Ledger on Tuesday reinforced what he called "a possible pattern of disingenuousness" by Viswanathan. According to the New Jersey newspaper, when one of its reporters asked Viswanathan last week which books had inspired her, she replied, "Nothing I read gave me the inspiration."

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Meghan Daum: L.A. Times OP-Editorial

Kaavya's so not happy ending

April 29, 2006

KAAVYA VISWANATHAN has had a really, really bad week. I don't mean the kind of bad week where you're totally PMSing and then your boyfriend dumps you for some unthreatening slut who takes remedial chemistry. I'm talking really bad.

Kaavya's this girl with awesome grades and parents who were obsessed about her getting into Harvard. They even hired a college admissions consultant, which lots of parents do these days. This consultant reads some of Kaavya's writing, which happened to be about a girl whose parents want her to get into Harvard so badly that she never has any fun. The consultant sends it to a big agent, who sells it to a book packager, who makes a deal with a big publisher.

The book is called "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life." And Kaavya, just 17 at the time, gets close to $500,000 for a two-book contract. She also gets a movie deal with DreamWorks. Oh, and she gets into Harvard too. How psyched is she?

So a few years go by and her book finally comes out (and they print 100,000 copies, which is a lot). You'd think this would be the best thing that ever happened to her but, in fact, this is when Kaavya's life starts to tank.

Last week, the Harvard Crimson runs a story saying she allegedly copied several passages from two books, "Sloppy Firsts" and "Second Helpings," by author Megan McCafferty. By the next day, the story is all over the media, and McCafferty's publisher finds more than 40 passages in "Opal Mehta" that are scarily similar to McCafferty's work.

Now, Kaavya totally does not seem like the kind of person to do something like that. She goes to Harvard! But the weird thing is that "Sloppy Firsts" and "Second Helpings" happen to be two of her favorite books ever. McCafferty, who had to wait until she was 28 to get a book published, was hugely inspiring to Kaavya when Kaavya was growing up. When Kaavya goes on "The Today Show" to try to fix everything, Katie Couric is super harsh with her. Then on Thursday her publisher pulls "Opal" off bookstore shelves. Oh. My. God.

Long story short, Kaavya must be massively freaking out. Not only is the situation 1) totally embarrassing but 2) she's now not even sure herself how this happened. She says that "any phrasing similarities were unintentional and unconscious…. I wasn't aware of how much I may have internalized Ms. McCafferty's words."

In other words, it's not that Kaavya was copying. It's just that she was so influenced by these books that it was like McCafferty's words became a part of her. It's kind of like when you're going out with a guy who's really into surfing and then suddenly you're all into surfing without meaning to be. But a lot of people think that's majorly bogus. I mean, 1) only a total loser with no core self would accidentally get into surfing because of some guy and 2) can you really "unconsciously internalize" something and then accidentally copy it almost verbatim in your own book?

WHEN PEOPLE get accused of plagiarizing, they always have these really random explanations. Four years ago, the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin published "The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys" and got busted for stealing stuff from Lynn McTaggart's book about Kathleen Kennedy. In Time in 2002, Kearns Goodwin explained that "though my footnotes repeatedly cited Ms. McTaggart's work, I failed to provide quotation marks for phrases that I had taken verbatim, having assumed that these phrases, drawn from my notes, were my words, not hers." This other historian dude, Stephen Ambrose, is a quotation mark spaz, too. Even other fiction writers, like Jay McInerney, Alex Haley, Jack London and Nella Larson, have been accused of unconsciously internalizing the words of other writers.

So if it can happen to anyone, why are people bugging out so much about a kid? Aren't adolescents' frontal lobes — the part of the brain that controls the ability to organize information (and maybe even moral judgment) — less developed than adults'? Isn't that why they call them "impressionable teens"?

Kaavya got her book deal when she was — hello! — 17 years old. As super smart as she is, the truth is she was and is still a teenager, and there's a reason that teenagers usually aren't professional writers. Sort of like the same reason they don't perform surgery or fly jetliners.

It doesn't help that publishers feel the need to compete with, say, "American Idol" and try to make people famous just because they're young and potentially marketable. There's a difference between a 17-year-old who sings an Avril Lavigne song on TV and one who is faced with the task of generating 314 pages that will be distributed and marketed all over the world.

Not that professional writers are all that, but published authors have to be more responsible than bloggers or MySpace types or clever e-mail writers. Sure, even though a few writers can be really good when they're young — Mary Shelley wrote "Frankenstein" when she was 19, but that was in 1816 when you weren't always getting interrupted by text messages — even the most meticulous of them aren't really up to the task until they're in their 20s or even really old, like in their 30s or 40s.

Yes, Kaavya messed up. But what about the domino effect caused by anxious parents, college counselors, agents and publishers who care more about marketing a phenom than upholding professional standards? These people really need to chill out and realize gymnasts and models might peak when they're teenagers, but creative abilities, like boys, take a little longer to mature.

Oh, and maybe I'm tripping, but it seems to me the big winner is Megan McCafferty. And she didn't even go to Harvard! Her publisher, Crown, a division of Random House, calls the whole thing "nothing less than an act of literary identity theft." But the publicity is sure to generate a whole new crop of readers.

How psyched is she?

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Young author faces more allegations of plagiarism

By Josh Getlin, Times Staff Writer
May 3, 2006

NEW YORK — Amid new charges of plagiarism, the publisher of "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life" said Tuesday that there would be no revised version of the novel, as had been promised earlier, nor would the company publish a second book under contract to the author, Kaavya Viswanathan.

The statement by Michael Pietsch, senior vice president and publisher of Little, Brown & Co., brought down the curtain on a story that had greatly embarrassed the publisher and the author, a 19-year-old Harvard sophomore.

Last week, Viswanathan admitted she had plagiarized as many as 40 passages from two novels by Megan McCafferty, "Sloppy Firsts" and "Second Helpings," published by Crown. She said, however, that the borrowing had been unintentional. Her publisher pulled all copies of the novel out of bookstores and said a revised version would be forthcoming.

But Viswanathan's woes widened Tuesday as she was hit with new allegations of plagiarism in articles by the Harvard Crimson and the New York Times.

The Crimson identified passages in the book similar to "The Princess Diaries" by Meg Cabot and "Haroun and the Sea of Stories," a children's novel by Salman Rushdie.

The Times identified several passages that Viswanathan appeared to have borrowed from "Can You Keep a Secret?" by young adult writer Sophie Kinsella.

Viswanathan had no comment on Tuesday's decision.

Random House Inc., which published McCafferty and Kinsella, also declined to comment, noting that Little, Brown had voluntarily withdrawn the book from the marketplace.

Viswanathan was 17 when she signed with Little, Brown.

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Student novelist just 'a skilled typist'
Posted 5/4/2006 8:30 PM ET USA Today

What people are saying about student plagiarism scandal:

Alfred P. Doblin, editorial page editor, the Herald News, Passaic County, N.J.: "Kaavya Viswanathan (is) the 19-year-old overachieving New Jerseyan who obtained a book and movie deal on her way to a Harvard education. Apparently, she more than overachieved, she plagiarized. In journalism ... there is no victory in a front-page story riddled with errors. But there is a lower level in hell for the plagiarist than for the 'fictional' news writer. Getting it wrong is unacceptable; getting it from someone else is unpardonable. ... Writers — fiction or journalists — are nothing if they do not have a distinctive voice. ... A would-be novelist without the creativity to create is nothing but a skilled typist. ... Language is what separates humans from cable television talk show hosts. It is not to be treated casually."

Ruth Marcus, columnist, in The Washington Post: "The most interesting — and in a way most egregious — thing about Harvard University sophomore Viswanathan isn't the plagiarism. It's the packaging. ... With all this third-party positioning, is it any wonder that a person — especially a teenage person — could forget (or ignore) the fact that some of the writing in her book is not actually hers? How easy it is for authenticity to be obscured in a world in which hired help packages preschool applications, in which the line between a real relationship with an adult and strategic sucking-up is blurred."

Margo Hammond, column, in the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times: " 'Plagiarist' used to be the worst label with which a writer could be smacked. Stealing someone else's intellectual property was the cardinal sin of scribes. Now ... while plagiarism might still get you expelled from some schools, in the real world it is not the career-ender it used to be. ... Did Viswanathan hang her head in shame? No, she went on the Today show and defended herself ... she used the weasel word 'borrowing.' ... The Founding Fathers must be spinning in their graves. (Intellectual property) is the only property specifically protected in the U.S. Constitution. ... Men of creativity themselves, the framers of the Constitution understood that in order to encourage creativity and innovation, two essential ingredients for a democratic society, people have to be assured that their work will be protected."

The Hartford (Conn.) Courant, in an editorial: "Sometimes being smart is not enough to prevent a person from being stupid. That may be the most important lesson Harvard sophomore Viswanathan will take away from her Ivy League education. Viswanathan ... was privileged to be offered a $500,000 book contract while 17 and just a freshman. ... Now it seems Viswanathan plagiarized passages from the novels of Megan McCafferty, in some cases lifting sentences nearly verbatim. ... Viswanathan no doubt has talent of her own and should have trusted it enough to produce original work. Presumably, she would not get away with lifting passages for her academic papers, however 'unintentional.' "

H.D.S. Greenway, columnist, The Boston Globe: "It is becoming increasingly depressing to reread 1984, George Orwell's prophetic, mid-20th-century novel. ... Forces are working hard to consolidate what Orwell's imagined state achieved. Orwell's character (Julia) is introduced to us as someone who 'worked in the Fiction Department.' ... 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. But then she had Alloy, the book packager. ... Apparently, these literary factories have removed the need for authors to pace the floors of their garrets trying to think up plot lines. ... It is interesting that Alloy, first called 17th Street Productions, chose to change its name to a word that can mean to debase gold or silver with inferior metals."