Only a month ago, every student at Harvard University was envious of a fellow freshman, Kaavya Viswanathan, who got a $500,000 deal by a prestigious publishing company, Little Brown & Co, for her new fiction How Opal Got Kissed Got Wild and Got a Life and for a following novel. On top of that, DreamWorks expressed an interest to create a movie based on Kaavya's book. For an unpublished writer at the age of 17, sealing this deal, seems beyond any kind of imagination... However, the story unfolds in a bitter ending as the Harvard student gets caught plagiarizing 14 passages from author Megan McCafferty's novels, Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings. Kaavya publicly apologizes about 'internalizing'' McCafferty's words in her own writing, since she has been a fan of the author from a very young age and resorts to cancel all books published, until the novel is reviewed. More updates on the story can be found in Harvard's magazine, here.
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Expressions Exported - Nitin Gokarn - http://spaces.msn.com/engeegee/
Hey Nitin,
I've read Kaavya's book and must admit that I enjoyed it. However, plagiarizing her way to a first novel can by no means be accepted by people as a minor issue. People who do this, simply get rejected by publishing companies. Kaavya, on the other hand, had the right connections to overide this problem. At least now, she'll have to prove she can do better. Any publicity is good publicity, right?
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