How Kaavya Got Sloppy
The book industry is tuned in very closely to the Kaavya Viswanathan story, the high school student who got a $500,000 advance from a big publisher to write two novels, the first of which is being accused of containing plagiarized language. The book, "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life," has several passages and themes in common with two books by Megan McCafferty, "Sloppy Firsts" and "Second Helpings." McCafferty and her publisher, Random House, are, of course, angry and Viswanathan and her publisher, Little, Brown, are, of course, mortified and apologetic. Viswanathan, now a 19-year old Harvard sophomore, acknowledged reading McCafferty's books and says they were a big influence but she hadn't realized how much she "may have internalized [her] words." She's revising the passages in question.
I know the right emotion to have for this is outrage. Obviously, there is little here that is excusable, and there are copyrights and contracts and lawsuits and reputations at stake for all the players involved. And there is a part of me that shakes my head at the whole thing because there is nothing worse or more juvenile than flat out plagiarism. But what never gets discussed in these cases is the possibility that the plagiarism was a genuine mistake. Legally, I know it doesn't matter if the copying is intentional or not, but for the sake of one's character, especially for a writer as young as Viswanathan, I think that distinction means the world.
The thing is, I've done this before. Especially in college writing courses where you are reading book after book of short stories and poems, passages from obscure novels, other students' writing, not to mention the heft of reading you have from unrelated courses, you have a lot that gets jammed in your head. Some of it was very distinctive, and other things melted away from my immediate memory only to resurface in unexpected places. I'd write a (bad) short story that involved an angry man in a trailer shouting things at a car behind him, only to realize, months later, that this was the general subject of another short story we'd read for class; I'd come up with a distinctive character trait (she smelled like chlorine) and someone would point out something similar in a book we'd just read.
Luckily for me, I could just be vaguely embarrassed and toss the story or start over. Luckily, my writing was never good enough to garner any serious attention, and the little things I may have "internalized" were forgotten. To be fair, some of the passages in question in Viswanathan's book are striking in similarity. Here's the example the New York Times used:
At one point in "Sloppy Firsts," Ms. McCafferty's heroine unexpectedly encounters her love interest. Ms. McCafferty writes:"Though I used to see him sometimes at Hope's house, Marcus and I had never, ever acknowledged each other's existence before. So I froze, not knowing whether
I should (a) laugh, (b) say something, or (c) ignore him and keep on walking. I chose a brilliant combo of (a) and (b).
" 'Uh, yeah. Ha. Ha. Ha.'
"I turned around and saw that Marcus was smiling at me."
Similarly, Ms. Viswanathan's heroine, Opal, bumps into her love interest, and the two of them spy on one of the school's popular girls.
Ms. Viswanathan writes: "Though I had been to school with him for the last three years, Sean Whalen and I had never acknowledged each other's existence before. I froze, unsure of (a) what he was talking about, or (b) what I was supposed to do about it. I stared at him.
" 'Flatirons,' he said. 'At least seven flatirons for that hair.'
" 'Ha, yeah. Uh, ha. Ha.' I looked at the floor and managed a pathetic combination of laughter and monosyllables, then remembered that the object of our mockery was his former best friend.
"I looked up and saw that Sean was grinning."
I don't know Viswanathan or if she'd be the type of person to open up a book she liked and copy-almost verbatim-a passage and slap her name on it. I know I'm not that type of person, but I also know how things get stuck in my head without me realizing it. I can empathize with reading and loving something (the style, the working, the particular image or feeling it evoked) and then going to write something of my own where it turned out the "inspiration" was really a sad trick of memory. This has happened to me, and I think to others. And maybe it's just the fact that she was so young when this happened, but I think this may be the case here.
There are others at fault: the packagers, the editors. And in the end, like I said, there's nothing to be done about the result. Being guilty of plagiarism is just that; no soft lines. But maybe there's some room for an acknowledgement of a human weakness different than dishonesty: naïveté.
UPDATE:
Little, Brown is recalling the book and the movie deal got dropped like a hot potato. Apparently the 40 or so passages in question were just too much.
I too can identify with the idea of inspiration as a "sad trick of memory." I was never caught at it by, but I often caught myself at it, usually far, far after the fact and it's embarassing to realize that that funny bit of dialogue you put in your Advanced Fiction project was heavily influenced by some comedian's stand-up routine or that beautiful phrase in a poem you wrote was lifted directly from an e.e. cummings poem you read in the 8th grade.
There's more good commentary on the Viswanathan story on Galleycat, if you haven't seen it already.
It seems we think alike in this. When I was writing my novel, without doubt I'd get a phrase or two in my head, and I'd think--did I read that somewhere? The thing is, when a young author is learning to write, that's what you do--you think of your influences, of the voices you've read. The difference is, that when these imitations come out in your own writing, it's usually in an interim stage, while you're still maturing as a writer. So it never actually gets published.
It's almost the publishing industry's own fault for going after the younger and younger, press-getting authors, giving them higher and higher advances so agents scramble to find the next teenage sensation.
That's when you get the interim material--the imitating of the idols before the writer's own special voice can come to fruition.
Does that make any sense? Clearly I've been thinking about this a lot!!
From the NYTimes:
Ms. Cohen showed some of Ms. Viswanathan's writing to Suzanne Gluck, her agent at the William Morris Agency. Ms. Viswanathan said that she had written a piece in the vein of "The Lovely Bones," the 2002 best seller by Alice Sebold, but that Ms. Gluck thought that it was too dark. "They thought it would be better if I did a lighter piece. They thought that was more likely to sell."
"In the vein of" seems particularly ominous in light of her new books. But I agree with what everyone's been saying--it probably was unintentional, and understandable, and that most people lose these heavy-handed accidental imitations when they have more experience as a writer. But how mortifying, if she had never even considered that she was imitating her favorite writer!
I don't know anything about the publishing world, but.... the problem seems like it could be in signing a young author to a two-book deal without her having a book yet. Without her even having a chapter, if I read it correctly. Surely she felt the pressure to produce something, something sellable... and it seems she may have succumbed to that pressure a bit. Seems like signing a deal without having the product yet might distort the result? I don't know. Maybe a little.
oh, by the way, I was totally wrong about her not having written any chapters before she got a deal. For the record. I guess she had written four.