Kaavya is Innocent, Until Proven Otherwise

Dear Kaavya,

This is your Akka writing. The fact that you have never met me is immaterial; we are brown and we don’t live in the land our parents were born in—that alone means that you probably have relatives you’ve never met, just like I do, so Akka it easily is.

Paavum Kaavya (letÂ’s call you PK for short), there is something I want you to know, but before I disclose that, I have to admit a fault of which I am rather ashamed, a fault which I hope youÂ’ll forgive your imperfect Akka for.

I was jealous of you.

Just a bissel, but it was enough to make me loathe myself for a few minutes. Green looks fabulous on me, but envy surely does not flatter. Wait, don’t frown—I promise that once I was aware that I was being a twat, I earnestly called myself out on it and owned my jealousy. Long before I admitted that my “unlikely-fantasy-if-wishes-came-true” job was acting, I cherished what to me seemed an even more far-fetched aspiration: to write. Getting a book deal seemed like the greatest thing which could possibly happen to someone. To get paid to write? Wow. And that you did, with a stunning advance, which everyone bandies about ad nauseum, since it makes your “fall” all the more violent.

Sigh. How I wished that my parents had been savvy enough to enroll me in an Ivy-League-Prep-Camp-Thing. Where my counselor, who just happened to be a published author, would discover me as if I were some naïve starlet in a ‘40s era soda shop and then pluck me out of the sweaty, freaked-out ranks of cloned overachievers and marvel at my genuine uniqueness. My parents made me turn down Columbia for U.C. Davis. My parents are SO not your parents. Your parents gave you everything, including an inadvertent star-making opp that made me want to howl. You’re nearly half my age. It’s like watching your little sister get married before you do. It’s a little humiliating to endure, in this obsessed with chronological-milestones culture we share.

So, whenever this group blog of mine did a post about you, I’d look down and notice that my skin suddenly looked wayyy more olive than usual. Then I’d take a deep breath and tell myself that you deserved it. That you had hustled for it, working on your writing when in comparison, 17-year old me probably would’ve been brooding over which Smiths or Ultravox LP to spin next. My skin would go back to the shade my mother calls “irrantharam” and I’d exhale with relief. It felt good to be silently proud of you.

Here’s the thing my little PK: I still am. And I’m a little appalled at how many people are crowing elatedly about your alleged toppling. The first thing I thought of when I read the “Crimson” writing on the blog was that tragically accurate, snarktastic story about the pet shop with international crabs. You’re looking at me blankly. I’m sure you haven’t slept. Tut-tut. That won’t do. You know brown girls are predisposed to developing those nasty under eye circles. Take a benadryl, bachi. Your skin and, well, everything will thank you. Hell, take a nap right now. I’ll dispel your probably non-existent curiosity about crabs for you, like a wee bedtime story.

So, there was this pet store and it was renowned for carrying the most exhaustive selection of crabs aroundÂ…there were specimens from Mexico, Japan, RussiaÂ…almost everywhere, really. Each tank had a very secure looking cover to hold in the precious crab-cargo. All, but one, that is. Perplexed, a customer pointed to the open cage and asked the pet store proprietor why it didnÂ’t have a lid.

“Oh. Those are the crabs from India. A lid isn’t required, because as soon as one of them climbs up, all of the others furiously yank it back down. So they never get out.”

Look at you, almost asleep. And I haven’t even come to my main point yet! No wonder you got the book deal and I didn’t. We hadn’t met, so I have no way of knowing if we have this in common, but something tells me we just might—you see, I have a near photographic memory for all things useless. Didn’t help me with German vocab, but it does help me recall conversations I’ve had almost flawlessly, even if it’s been some time since the words were originally spoken (as you can imagine, this makes me a terrifying girlfriend, since it’s exceptionally easy to destroy my boyfriends in arguments…but we won’t go there, in case your parents are reading. Wha-? OH. Hi Viswanathan Uncle and Auntie! I promise I’m a virgin who’s never conversed with men, even ones I’m related to—I’m totally safe to keep around Kaavya!) Whew, that was close.

Anyway, I remember lots of other things as well. I can remember what my very best friend Eileen Perfume was wearing the day Los Angeles exploded in to riots over the Rodney King verdict. (Maroon boucle turtleneck sweater, black crinkle skirt with blood red roses here and there and black knee-high boots, which she had folded down slightly. She had her hair half-up and half-down, eyeliner on the lower lids, ruby lips and no other makeup.) Like you probably are, I’m a devoted bibliophile who can’t bear to be without something to read at all times. My memory kicks in here, too, since as edifying as Gita Mehta or Vikram Seth might be, knowing what either of them wrote at some point ain’t gonna get me an “A” on anything.

So this memory of mine, which I suspect you got too—sometimes, it is almost dangerous, yes? I can remember being in graduate school (has it already been five years since I graduated? Mein Gott.) and being so exhausted, because I worked full-time (as required by my program) AND took all my classes from 7-10 pm each night. I’d read books and articles throughout the entire day and then sit at my computer around 1 am, after the dinner dishes had been washed and my then-boyfriend had been tended to like some entitled Maharajah who keeps asking for “pani!” when he’s supposed to be asleep. Then, exhausted to the point of sleeping mid-keystroke, I would type. And sometimes, I’d go back and see a sentence and think, “weird”.

I’d feel that odd tingle that unmoored recognition evokes. And then slightly horrified and suddenly awake, I’d realize that I had typed, almost verbatim, something I had read earlier in the day. Sometimes, what I had borrowed wasn’t even brilliant. I’d shake my head then. I was terrified of getting caught, since I was certain that one day I’d turn in a paper that contained a sentence that I hadn’t “re-recognized” in time. “Dear Lord, please don’t let it be something craptacular…if I get in trouble, at least let me parrot something genius.” But that’s not how my little universe works, PK. When I was in third grade, my dramatic ascent up the Spelling Bee ladder was destroyed when I misspelled a word so simple, I’m too ashamed to even type it. It’s always the little things that I trip over, in the end.

I donÂ’t believe that you are the torment-deserving fraud that many of my fellow pajamahadeen think you are. I donÂ’t think you copied those words, that youÂ’re a plagiarist. I think that either one of two things occurred, neither of which is really your fault:

1) You pulled an “Akka” and regurgitated something that was playing on your mind. Like the number “170”. Even if this is true, I blame your handlers for not vetting a manuscript that had received sooo much attention, in this post-Frey era. Perhaps I am mistaken, but aren’t they supposed to read, re-read and triple read what they’re hawking? I can’t help but believe that this is quite common in terms of the writing process, this borrowing a phrase or voice. If this public flogging hasn’t happened often to other writers, then I feel like some critical step was missed in this entire process. Even if I’m wrong, and the process allows that manuscripts DON’T get vetted as carefully as a cabinet-level appointment (WTF?) I think you didn’t intend to lift such craptacular writing. If you were pushed over the ethical edge by exhaustion, pressure and your Ivied obligations, I think you would’ve chosen someone better to borrow from.

2) And this one is the more sinister, more galling and I think, most possible. I keep reading that your book was initially quite different. Darker. Truer. Kaavya-er. I heard that THAT manuscript wasn’t “marketable”, not with a pinkish cover and some strappy stilettos. I heard that lots of Kaavya disappeared and in its place, fluff was stuffed in to Opal Mehta. I don’t know if you’re being set up (that would be even MORE sinister! Perish the thought!) but I do think that someone else did that heavy lifting, dear girl. And I think you’re the one who’s getting marched up to Golgotha for it.

Speaking of Golgotha, perhaps the reason I have so much faith in you is because I suddenly have a lot in me, quite literally. I spent enough time in church last week to qualify being religious as a part-time job, potentially with bennies, if itÂ’s like Starbucks. I emerged from my week of holiness, calmer, stronger, fortified with light. Buoyed by hope and a renewed determination to see good everywhere, in everyone, in all things. If I can have faith that bread and wine when consecrated by a priest, become the body and blood of my savior, I can give my PK the benefit of my doubt. Let people trash and thrash you, Kaavya. Blogging has thoroughly taught me that the bile which they spew (my sinful self included, natch) indicates more about them then you, anyway. You deserve to be innocent until proven otherwise. And I believe that you might just be exonerated of these heavy, back-breaking charges which lay now on your similarly irrantharam shoulders. And if you should fall, while on your way, no matter what causes you to stumble, you will have my prayers and support. We are all human, pots and kettles the lot of us and we all deserve a little bit of compassion.

Sincerely,

Anna-akka

564 thoughts on “Kaavya is Innocent, Until Proven Otherwise

  1. Regarding her professor’s comments – aren’t profs supposed to keep grades confidential? Seems like he/she crossed some ethical boundaries himself.

    Guys, read the original comment by the person. He/ she claims to be TA @ Harvard and is only talking in general terms. Only if the person (if that person is actually a TA) spills out her SS#. and the letter grade with the course fully identified, then only it is unethical.

    This is internet – might be some kiddo from Surat claiming to be Harvard TA.

  2. ahem…give the girl-bashing a bit of rest, not keep on bashing her and then resting to keep…oh you get what i mean.

    I still don’t see the bashing… it’s almost as if people expect her to be bashed for the copying. Unless Razib is right, and I really am oblivious to subtle nuances 😉

  3. Deepa:

    yeah you’re right, its about specific instances but I was just making a general comment on chick lit itself as a genre…that fact that it seemed so easy to plagiarise that heavily and that it took this long for KV to get found out, it kinda just shows the level of original thought within chick lit as a literary genre.

    metric:

    the bashing isn’t on this post, and i am v sure you understand more subtle nuances than me 🙂 was just musing in general with people’s attitudes towards KV. Yep, she’s been pretty stupid, but people taking out their frustrated Ivy-League/big bucks book deal dreams under a thin veneer of ‘fighting for justice’ just looks a bit silly too. People who fight for justice are looking at what’s happening in Nepal and Iraq and Colombia, not at some teenage Indian-American who just got caught out for an Ashlee Simpson-esque literary scandal.

    She’s brought enough shame on herself and her family for people to keep laughin at her when she’s down. Poor little deluded girl. Okay, rich little deluded girl, but still.

  4. This article brings up some more questions, specifically regarding whether the author whose work was copied was even one of KV’s favorites.

    On April 15, Viswanathan wrote 259 words for the Times of India about her favorite books. She mentioned that she was currently reading Zadie Smith’s On Beauty — “I like it a lot” — and she expressed her admiration for the works of Evelyn Waugh, P.G. Wodehouse, Henry James, Jane Austen, the Brönte sisters, Kazuo Ishiguro, Margaret Atwood, Dorothy Dunnett, and Ian McEwan — hardly the stuff of mass-market chicklit. At school, she wrote, she keeps up with the belles lettres “by reading all the books that are short-listed for the Booker,” a reference to the Mann Booker Prize for Fiction, a prestigious award for novelists from the British Commonwealth and Ireland. When she spoke to the Associated Press on April 23, she again said that she enjoyed Atwood and Ishiguro. And when asked in an interview with UniversityChic.com to list “some of [her] favorite books,” she answered, “I really like Kazuo Ishiguro.” On a less highbrow note, she told the Times of India about her “guilty pleasure”: old children’s books, especially the works of Enid Blyton, the English author behind the Famous Five and Noddy book series. And she confessed to UniversityChic.com that “I really like reading trashy romance novels. Is that something I can admit?” But one author Viswanathan never mentioned was Megan McCafferty. And while McCafferty’s books aim at a young audience and contain romance, few would describe them as “old children’s books” or “romance novels.” If McCafferty’s books had “spoke[n]” to Viswanathan “in a way few others did,” she kept it to herself.
  5. But tell me if I write this:

    Getting a book deal seemed like the greatest thing which could possibly happen to someone. To get paid to write? Great. And that you did, with a stunning advance, which everyone bandies about ad nauseum, since it makes your “fall” all the more interesting.

    And do not tell you the source source, Sepia Mutiny how sympathetic are you going to be with me?

  6. I’m 19 years old.

    If I skewer and e-lynch her without knowing all the facts, will I be skewered myself? Or will you all be compassionate towards me due to my age?

  7. This is and will continue to be a stain on the (South) Indian American community

    Crabs! Stick-to-me-I-was-born-in-your-caste-Crabs.

  8. From Maud Newton

    one of her former instructors has surfaced at Metafilter to offer some perspective

    Kaavya was my student last spring (in a section where I was a TA). I was surprised to learn she had written a book, as her writing was awful– I had given her low grades on her papers.
    I feel bad for her, even though she was always falling asleep in section (as if you donÂ’t notice a snoozing person sitting at a conference table for ten). Plagiarizing from chick lit has to be some kind of double whammy against artistic integrity.
  9. If I skewer and e-lynch her without knowing all the facts, will I be skewered myself? Or will you all be compassionate towards me due to my age?

    if i DID know how old you were and you were talking mad trash, YES, i would feel some pity for YOU, too. i feel the same for the very young idiots who talked trash about me for blogging about my past…livejournal, anyone?

    for the umpteenth time, i’m not excusing cheating or plagiarism. yes, i’m taking a different position from abhi, but it’s because i feel queasy about judging her when i don’t know the whole truth. as more comes out, it may turn out that my faith in her was undeserved, if so, i will be disappointed. but even if she is 100% guilty, i still feel bad for her. this is going to follow her…and i know that i for one am not the person i was at 18 or 19 and i’m NOT my mistakes. if i want that kind of mercy, i have to grant it to her, as well.

    anyway, i don’t think anyone is skewering people who are barbecuing her, at least i’m not. disagreeing about issues is normal. pleading for tolerance is normal. expecting teens to behave a certain way just b/c some company was stupid enough to throw a lot of scrill at them? abnormal. and not wise.

  10. Some of the reactions in the wake of the charges have ranged from flash cartoons to simple schadenfreude, but over at Metafilter (by way of Maud Newton), one of Viswanathan’s college instructors, posting as “mowglisambo” comments on her time in his class

    dolores, i think you’re referring to the above situation? like i said on abhi’s thread…

    also? that handle her instructor chose? sucks tampons.

    AND as i skimmed through metafilter, “mowgli” said something about http://kaavyaviswanathan.blogspot.com/ not getting updated anytime soon, etc…uh, was i the ONLY one who thought that was a fake blog? come ON.

  11. maybe so. but escaping their consequences is sometimes only a rich kid’s prerogative.

    It’s interesting how much this woman is now serving as a Rohrschach test for people in this space on privilege, accountabiltiy, and a whole bunch of other things. I know that if I hadn’t grown up wealthy and gotten away with things, I wouldn’t be as apologetic towards her as I am–read myself back into her. I think I’m inclined to agree at this point–reluctantly–that whatever consequences we need to face that are not driven by other people’s greed, envy, sexism, racism, or violence, we probably should. But how do we figure that part out?

    -se

  12. Where does the fine line lie between being young and making mistakes (sure, people have screwed up worse than her at that age) and taking stuff nearly verbatim from other sources?

    If nothing else, if I were an author putting a book out to the world, especially in a situation like this that is likely to get a lot of publicity due to my age, I would definitely make sure that what I’m putting out can hold up to scrutiny. I’m younger than her and I know that for every paper or assignment I hand in, I read through it to make sure I haven’t inadvertently written stuff that could be construed as direct copying of someone else’s work. Age really has nothing to do with it. If you’re writing, it’s something you do automatically as part of the process.

    It is sad that she will be skewered for this no matter what, and even though I feel supremely unsympathetic and a little coldhearted, it’s hard not to think of it as just desserts.

  13. This whole post is a little scary… It is (and I don’t remember who used the term) an e-lynching, and oddly reminiscent of how Indian youth, in a group, can gang up on one of their own and call them “whitewashed” or “slutty” or you get the drift…

    In this case, its clear Ms. Vishwanathan f*cked up, but come on, is it that big a deal? Dickens did it. Shakespeare did it. Yann Martel did it. Every writer subconsciously does it, to some degree (I’m not a writer, but when I do try to write, I am always subconsciously stylistically imitating a writer that I admire).

    Some comments:

    1) I will make it a point to hire Ms. Vishwanathan out of Harvard at the investment bank I work at at the appropriate time. I like my more junior bankers to imitate my writing style so I don’t have to edit their work as much (I can’t abide by writing styles different from mine at work). She will be good at this.

    2) People really have a schadenfreude issue. How is it relevant that she grow up wealthy, went to Harvard, has “cool” parents who go to Coldplay concerts, wants to be a banker, etc. etc? It seems like everyone is thrilled that Little Ms. Perferct scr*wed up. That’s ridiculous and not fair.

    2) Anna, I humbly disagree that South Asians are less mature than non-South Asians at age 17. I recall my crew at that age and remember being more purposeful and “adult” than the keg-stand crowd (though not by that much).

  14. anna,

    though i didn’t agree w/ u fully, i still understood where u were coming from and i could appreciate the principle of what you were saying….

    but

    ” it may turn out that my faith in her was undeserved, if so, i will be disappointed. but even if she is 100% guilty, i still feel bad for her”

    you will still feel bad for her, even if she’s 100% guilty!!!!….even if she knew she exactly what she was doing and figured she wouldn’t get caught…

    you’ll still feel bad for her? there are so many other people in this world that i would feel bad for….but w/ her half-accepting pseudo apology, she is not one…i’m not gonna skewer her, but i’m not gonna ask people to feel bad for her either….

    the young excuse is holding less and less water for me as i think about it…

    we have all made mistakes, but one needs to stand up and own up before any real compassion can be bestowed

  15. you will still feel bad for her, even if she’s 100% guilty!!!!….even if she knew she exactly what she was doing and figured she wouldn’t get caught…

    i will and here’s why– her ordeal will be public. reporters outside her front door, badgering her parents as they take out the trash, following and stalking and otherwise being unpleasant…etc. it’s a great news story and that means she won’t be left alone. i’m not even a C-list blogger and when there are flare-ups about me/shitstorms on my personal blogs/this one, i am affected. occasionally, i’m devastated. i cry. i’m human. so is she. and her trials are 1000x worse than mine, because katie couric isn’t talking about ME on the today show.

    IF she is guilty, i will be VERY disappointed in her. i haven’t read another post that contained as much support for her as my own and i know there are mutineers out there thinking, “Anna…come on…WTF?” if it turns out that her publishing packaging whatever-ing company wasn’t reponsible and SHE was…my defense of her ends– but my pleas to our better natures won’t.

    i don’t think i need to repeat that i don’t approve of plagiarism or cheating. i also don’t approve of kicking people when they’re down, whether they “ask for it” or not. the guilty deserve punishment, but it isn’t necessarily my right to serve it.

  16. Anna, you’re too cool for words. And you display great “moral maturity.”

    Good for you. Live strong grrrl.

  17. anna,

    hmm… i guess i just don’t get where you’re coming from… i can understand having compassion for others and forgiving others…but i don’t think you can forgive someone who hasn’t asked for forgiveness and maybe that’s my problem with offering compassion….

    the scenario you present about her being mobbed by the media, isn’t that what happens when a politician is involved in a scandal? should we not do that either? isn’t it the media’s duty to some extent to cover such a story? so who should be mobbed and who shouldn’t?

  18. Curioser and curioser on the alloy connection:

    Leslie Morgenstein, president of Alloy, which holds the copyright along with her, said by e-mail yesterday that his firm did not help Viswanathan with any of the actual writing. ”We helped Kaavya conceptualize and plot the book,” he said. ”We are looking into the serious allegations before commenting further.” A few literary agents contacted yesterday by the Globe raised eyebrows at the packager’s active role in conceptualizing the novel. ”We would never recommend to an author that they share copyright for something as minor as refining a concept,” said Boston-area literary agent Doe Coover. [Link]
  19. It is (and I don’t remember who used the term) an e-lynching,

    Hari, it was the author of this post who used the term. 😉 Um…also…are you…um…hiring? Cleaning monkey poo gets REALLY old.

    looks down sheepishly

  20. but i don’t think you can forgive someone who hasn’t asked for forgiveness and maybe that’s my problem with offering compassion….

    if i had to wait until each person who wronged me ASKED for my forgiveness, i’d never move on with my life. 🙂 thanks for being so kind while debating me, btw.

    as for the media, yes, they have a duty to investigate and report the news. that doesn’t mean that they should make someone’s life a living hell. a politician who represents me owes me something. some kid at harvard doesn’t.

  21. Anna – I haven’t read all of the comments so I apologize if this point has already been made. But on skimming through some of the comments I see you and many others talk about the foolish things we all do at 19. I too was the queen of fool-dom at 19 and am not even sure I’m over it yet. But stop for just a second and think of the kind of foolish things one did at 19. As far as I can recall most of our foolishness had to do with unrealistic ideals, defiance, rage against the machine, unrealistic romanticism, or simply getting wasted all day long for weeks on end. I think there is a strong qualitative difference in Kaavya’s foolishness which places her in a questionable ethical realm. The only part of Kaavya’s foolishness I can relate to is the invincibility one feels at 19. But in no other way do I feel inclined to concede that her age should be a factor in softening our stance towards what she did. Of course there’s always the possibility that the book packagers did it and she’s innocent. But even a 5 year old understands the difference between ethical injunctions and non-ethical ones. No amount of screaming will make them tidy up their rooms, but a small reprimand about lying will make them go red in the face. I understand you’re just trying to give her the benefit of the doubt. My point is simply that if you take a moment to reflect on your own 19 year old foolishness you will probably realize that it would turn out to be more along the line of telling the book dealer to go f**k off if he didn’t let you do exactly what you want rather than stuff bordering on the unethical.

  22. anna,

    “thanks for being so kind while debating me, btw” its the only real way to have a debate 😉

    the harvard student doesn’t owe you anything then, but why do you need to give her your forgiveness? do you owe her something?

    IMO, she does owe us something, maybe not on the exact same level as my congressman….b/c she is putting her product out to john q. public, right?

  23. Kaavya has proven that she is a true blue Indian, in the glorius tradition of Bhappi Lahiri, Anu Malik and Mahesh Bhatt who are often “inspired” by other people.Even Amreeka and Harvard cant was not able to change it. We are proud of you. Kaavya come to Mumbai and write film scripts,all these firangs carping about originality can f… themselves

  24. Rani,

    but i don’t think you can forgive someone who hasn’t asked for forgiveness and maybe that’s my problem with offering compassion….

    Forgiveness and compassion are two different (but overlapping) concepts. You can forgive a person’s transgressions if there are mitigating circumstances such as (relevant to this example) youth etc, even if they haven’t expressed remorse for their actions, but compassion should never be withheld. You can admonish someone for their misdemeanours without necessarily having a problem with simultaneously feeling empathy towards them too.

    In any case, the writer here was not acting out of maliciousness. She didn’t kill anyone. She wasn’t cruel towards anyone. She possibly just suffered from over-confidence and overstepped the mark, with the subsequent self-destructive result.

    Let’s keep things in proportion here. It’s not like we’re talking about OBL or that guy currently on trial for 9/11.

    Plus she’s still very young. She’s made a huge mistake, hopefully she’s learned from it, gained some humility (if it was lacking), and should move on positively with the rest of her life. So everyone should take it easy.

  25. i will say this for opal mehta – whoever its author(s) may be, it has certainly given us a lot to talk about… and we haven’t even had to read the book!

    as for the young sister, clearly the issue now on the table is not so much whether she or her unconscious wrote the offending sentences, but rather how much of the book she wrote in the first place.

    so far i haven’t learned a damn thing from this controversy thus far about morality, plagiarism, or kaavya’s personal character and integrity. but i have learned some interesting facts about the publishing industry. props to pooja for filling us in on the “packaging” business in general and on the specific firm that shares the copyright on kaavya’s book.

    ultimately publishing like every other business has a strong tendency to commodification – in other words if the market will bear (purchase) thirty different chick-lit books with interghangeable characters and plot elements, then the industry will generate those thirty books. just as the thirty different cereals you see at the supermarket have overlapping ingredients.

    if you’re producing teenage chick-lit (or whatever other genre it might happen to be) on an industrial basis it makes sense that you would establish a production chain that looks like an assembly line rather than a writer’s colony. all kinds of consultants and outsourcers and in- and out-of-house efficiency enhancers can then come into play. in turn they are charged with assembling a product that is just new enough to attract sales, but with no further obligation that it be original. in fact, originality is dangerous – witness the reported repudiation of kaavya’s first plotline, on grounds that it was too “dark.” (i’d love to know what it was, by the way. kaavya, spill the beans!)

    by this logic, “authorship” in the traditional sense is an inconvenience, since it brings with it such unpleasantries as intellectual property, as well as potentially gives one person undue power in shaping the product, potentially away from what the market analysts have determined is the best course. it helps therefore if the “author,” that necessary evil, is young and manipulable and maybe even not that gifted, so that he/she can be better convinced of the need to surrender control.

    in return, having an “author” does give a franchise a figurehead, a name and picture and identity, so you certainly want them to be interesting, photogenic, have an exotic or otherwise noteworthy backstory, the kind that inspires great envy and/or great compassion. whether it’s kaavya the 17-year-old harvard prodigy from the economically powerful immigrant group, or j.t. lenoir the scion of generations of white-trash mayhem and dysfunction, doesn’t matter, as long as the package looks good. as it happens, kaavya exists and j.t. lenoir turned out to be a hoax, but the commercial logic was the same… until folks got caught. (though i don’t see a class action suit of lenoir readers getting their $24.95 back from the publishing house.)

    given this crushingly powerful commercial context, i don’t really see this as a “comeuppance” for kaavya; as a result, whether such “comeuppance” is deserved or undeserved is an even more moot point. it could be a “comeuppance” or at least a damaging exposure of the way books get produced and packaged nowadays… but chances are it won’t be that, simply because (a) the business is good at covering its tracks; (b) everyone focuses on “the author” because he/she has been so successfully put forward to focus on, and because as humans we like to have a face, a name, someone to admire or hate; and (c) the target readership probably doesn’t give that much of a shit anyway, especially when the book is, despite its industrial production values, a good yarn, which opal mehta seems to be. (at least from the first chapter, which i found cute.)

    all of which suggests that even if opal mehta is tainted and won’t result in the film and the sequels (though for all i know, it still might), the industry will lick its not-so-lethal wounds and keep on keeping on. if folks don’t want these kinds of books to swamp the market, one-off plagiarism cases aren’t going to effect that change. consumer education is the only way, and i don’t know that consumers want to be educated that way. i certainly wouldn’t stop a teenager from reading kaavya’s book. i’d try perhaps to tell the teenager a bit about the controversy and what that says about the publishing biz, and encourage him/her to enjoy the book much as you’d enjoy a movie, knowing that in the end there’s one long-ass credit reel.

    as for kaavya, she does have a choice to make here. she’s gone along with the flow so far, and the flow was good to her; clearly she had an idea, and was able to expound on it to a sufficient degree to get the machine moving, so from a commercial acumen point of view, good for her. clearly also, and for whatever set of reasons, she was only one of the contributors to the content of the book that came out under her name. but it is her name — “her good name,” as it were — and she has the power, and i would think the need, to reassert it. to take back control of her identity. to accept that she has agency here, and that perhaps the indigestible verbiage that her publisher is having her mouth, or is putting out in her name, is not the only thing she could say at this juncture.

    so, lil’ sista, if you’re reading this: it’s time to tell your publisher’s PR and legal department to fuck off, and tell us who you are and what you plan to do next. no need for apologies; now it’s time to turn crisis into opportunity and set some kind of example on your own terms.

    peace

  26. Haven’t read KV yet but yes the Harvard factor is important and

    if anyone has read Vineeta Vijayaraghavan’s book, (Now what the hell was it called??) – ah yes google tells me it is Motherland!

    you will know it does zilch for the content.

  27. Jai,

    “but compassion should never be withheld”…

    yes, on a philosophical level…we should always forgive and forget and empathize w/ our brothers and sisters… but let’s be realistic here, (unless you’re actually saying that McCafferty, et al should follow this course)…

    why is it so hard to say she did something wrong and now she needs to face the music? btw, i fail to see what the mitigating circumstance(s) are? youth? anything else? aren’t there circumstances in every situation, does that excuse one’s actions?

    and why oh why does a person have to kill someone before we can say they did something that’s wrong?

    is murder the only accepted crime these days?

  28. Hari:

    This whole post is a little scary… It is (and I don’t remember who used the term) an e-lynching, and oddly reminiscent of how Indian youth, in a group, can gang up on one of their own and call them “whitewashed” or “slutty” or you get the drift…

    For my part, my reaction would be the same regardless of her ethnicity, nationality, class, or race. The reason I think that it’s not honest to plagiarize has nothing to do with any of these factors. Nor do I feel that anything she does reflects upon me (although perhaps some others do feel that way). Just saying, you can’t dismiss everyone with your argument above.

    Dickens did it. Shakespeare did it. Yann Martel did it. Every writer subconsciously does it, to some degree (I’m not a writer, but when I do try to write, I am always subconsciously stylistically imitating a writer that I admire).

    You and others have said this, but I don’t find it to be a strong point. Shakespeare: wrote some of his plays based on earlier plays or stories by others (e.g. Hamlet). But he did not steal lines. He does add concept as well as considerable writing talent so that his play and earlier versions are not carbon copies. Martel, from what I understand, again may have borrowed a general concept, but the writing was his own. No one is saying that Kaavya “stole” or borrowed a concept.

    technophobic geek:

    This is turning out to be another Toral Mehta thread.

    Go back and read those Toral Mehta threads – they are horribly nasty (people making far-ranging assumptions about her, nasty speculations and insinuations about her sex life, etc. This thread is quite different.

    ANNA:

    as for the media, yes, they have a duty to investigate and report the news. that doesn’t mean that they should make someone’s life a living hell.

    Agreed!!

    anyway, i don’t think anyone is skewering people who are barbecuing her, at least i’m not.

    I can appreciate your call to infuse our general approach to this story with some compassion. Where you lose me is when you appear to lump all critical posts/comments on this issue into the same box and label it “personal attacks fueled by hate/jealousy/schadenfreude” in a short sentence or two following the call for compassion.

  29. ultimately publishing like every other business has a strong tendency to commodification –

    As usual, on the money from Siddhartha!!! Heck, they are even trying to comodify software writing. I am living/participating in the process.

    IMO, TRUE Innovation is something big corporations FEAR. The reason is, you cant give out GUIDENCE on Innovation. Any management wants to CONTROL their destiny by having PREDICTABLE and MEASURABLE metrics of their business.

    Thats the reason BIG corporations aquire start-ups, as any kind of true innovation is only possible in the start-ups. The only true start-ups of publishing world are on the INTERNET (or the internets as Bush would say 🙂 ) in the form of blogs and such.

    The publishing industry works on Marketing and marketing alone. Like Siddhartha noted :

    so you certainly want them to be interesting, photogenic, have an exotic or otherwise noteworthy backstory, the kind that inspires great envy and/or great compassion.

    I will add CONTROVERSY to this marketable traits.

  30. by this logic, “authorship” in the traditional sense is an inconvenience, since it brings with it such unpleasantries as intellectual property, as well as potentially gives one person undue power in shaping the product, potentially away from what the market analysts have determined is the best course. it helps therefore if the “author,” that necessary evil, is young and manipulable and maybe even not that gifted, so that he/she can be better convinced of the need to surrender control. in return, having an “author” does give a franchise a figurehead, a name and picture and identity, so you certainly want them to be interesting, photogenic, have an exotic or otherwise noteworthy backstory, the kind that inspires great envy and/or great compassion.

    Thanks, siddhartha. I’ve been thinking about how to put this factor into words as well. We (society) seem to be attached to the myth of one or maybe at most 3 creators of a book or other creative work. So when all goes well, we are happy to focus on the credited “creator.” But if all does not go well and the credited creator is not actually the sole creator, then who do we focus on? And why don’t we either give up the myth of the sole creator, or “tell the market” that we will not accept work done by multiple uncredited creators which is then attributed to a sole creator?

    I thought I had killed my inner Objectivist. Die, damn you!

  31. Rani,

    I did say that there is a difference between compassion and forgiveness. I never said anything about “forgiving and forgetting”.

    Anyway, this is becoming a matter of semantics. One has to weigh up the factors within a particular situation and decide a) if “it’s really worth it”, and b) what a “proportional response” should be, if any.

    I’m not saying this is your own motivation — it’s just a general statement — but one has to beware of falling into the trap of sadistic self-righteousness. Enjoying another person’s suffering if one finds a morality-related reason to justify one’s own stance is not a constructive (or healthy) attitude. Again, a general statement and not one directed at you personally.

    There is a huge range between self-destructive, misguided behaviour, and the other extreme of vicious cruelty and maliciousness. There is, therefore, a huge range in the appropriate corresponding response.

    We don’t need to litigously dissect what is and what is not an appropriate reaction to each circumstance, at least not here on SM. Common sense, maturity, and control of one’s own ego should be the best guides in this regard.

  32. anyway, i don’t think anyone is skewering people who are barbecuing her, at least i’m not.
    I can appreciate your call to infuse our general approach to this story with some compassion. Where you lose me is when you appear to lump all critical posts/comments on this issue into the same box and label it “personal attacks fueled by hate/jealousy/schadenfreude” in a short sentence or two following the call for compassion.

    Deepa – well said! I’ve been confused by the accusations of bashing/skewering. There is a difference between criticism & debate and gloating.

  33. Woops! in post 194, the 2nd paragraph after the quotes are Deepa’s words, not mine – An honest mistake 😉

  34. anyway, i don’t think anyone is skewering people who are barbecuing her, at least i’m not.

    Damn, all this talk of skewering and barbecuing is making me hungry for some Oscar Meyer ™.

  35. Jai,

    i’m not really sure what you’re saying…but that’s due to my ignorance, i’m sure… but i can agree that “Common sense, maturity, and control of one’s own ego should be the best guides”…and this is what i think should have guided KV…

    Deepa, “I can appreciate your call to infuse our general approach to this story with some compassion. Where you lose me is when you appear to lump all critical posts/comments on this issue into the same box and label it “personal attacks fueled by hate/jealousy/schadenfreude” in a short sentence or two following the call for compassion.”

    EXACTLY!!! i’m not trying to skewer her either, but i don’t see how that means i need to jump to the other side of compassion and forgivess….can’t i be in b/w?

  36. oops, correction to my earlier comment (#187) – it should be j.t. leroy, not j.t. lenoir. but y’all lit’ry folks will have made the adjustment already.

  37. Re: “I can appreciate your call to infuse our general approach to this story with some compassion. Where you lose me is when you appear to lump all critical posts/comments on this issue into the same box and label it “personal attacks fueled by hate/jealousy/schadenfreude” in a short sentence or two following the call for compassion.”

    I agree!! Criticism is healthy and human. Although ANNA’s post should have people examine what their true intentions are, even if their true intentions are not so pure of heart, they still have a right to voice their opinion.