A NYT tipster has found more lifted passages in Opal Mehta from yet another chick lit tome, Can You Keep a Secret? by Sophie Kinsella (author of Shopaholic), circa 2004.
At least three portions in the book, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life, by Kaavya Viswanathan, bear striking similarities to writing in Can You Keep a Secret? … the phrasing and structure of some passages is nearly identical. [Link]
The structural similarities between both versions of this passage seem damning. (It is one contiguous passage):
| Can You Keep a Secret? | Opal Mehta |
|
“And we’ll tell everyone you got your Donna Karan coat from a discount warehouse shop.” Jemima gasps. “I didn’t!” she says, color suffusing her cheeks. “You did! I saw the carrier bag,” I chime in. “And we’ll make it public that your pearls are cultured, not real…” Jemima claps a hand over her mouth… “OK!” says Jemima, practically in tears. “OK! I promise I’ll forget all about it. I promise! Just please don’t mention the discount warehouse shop. Please.” |
“And I’ll tell everyone in that in eighth grade you used to wear a ‘My Little Pony’ sweatshirt to school every day,” I continued. Priscilla gasped. “I didn’t!” she said, her face purpling again. “You did! I even have pictures,” I said. “And I’ll make it public that you named your dog Pythagoras…” Priscilla opened her mouth and gave a few soundless gulps… “Okay, fine!” she said in complete consternation. “Fine! I promise I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll talk to the club manager. Just please don’t mention the sweatshirt. Please.” |
What boggles the mind is that there are people reading chick lit so closely as to be able to detect this. True, uh, dedication 
You know a story is overexposed when Paris Hilton’s relatives try to piggyback on the publicity 
But Viswanathan’s agent will have you know that when the Crown took down the Little, Brown, her client was the real victim. It’s her twinkie defense:
Viswanathan said she had read McCafferty but called herself the victim of a photographic memory. “Somewhere in her mind, she crossed an invisible line with this material and didn’t realize that the words so easy and available to her were not her own,” says her agent, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh… Walsh says, “I guarantee you she’ll graduate first in her class.” [Link]
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p>Ruth Marcus at the WaPo criticizes Viswanathan for unoriginality by using the phrase ‘curry-scented.’ The irony escapes her:
The curry-scented slapstick that follows is more product placement (Moschino miniskirt, Jimmy Choo stilettos, Habitual jeans) than literature… [Link]
The Economic Times shows some sensitivity:
It might be pertinent to remember that some years ago, a young author was being promoted by many senior writers as the next big thing in the publishing industry. And then, exactly the same thing happened with her. That story ended with the lady committing suicide. [Link]
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p>Class, true class. The plagiary and subsequent suicide of Indrani Aikath-Gyaltsen gave rise to an interesting twist of phrase (thanks, Thalassa):‘If something comes from exotic parts, it’s read very differently’
… “there’s a phrase `aesthetic affirmative action.’ If something comes from exotic parts, it’s read very differently than if it’s domestically grown…” Friends said she turned down one dashing military officer because he spoke English with a Punjabi accent, the Indian equivalent of a blue-collar nasal rasp. [Link]
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p>Other Indian papers struggled with the chick niche, spelling it ‘chiclet,’ ‘chicklet’ or ‘chic-lit‘ at random. Viswanathan was not amused:
“You better come correct with syntax [expletive deleted] or I’ll pop a dangling participle in your punk ass, you hear?” [Link
Meanwhile, one Boston brahmin worried the hungama might stain his silver spoon:
That may be fine for the world at large, but we at Harvard, quite frankly, are supposed to be something different. Every student here knows what it feels like to drop the H-bomb and is familiar with that tinge of pride at the recognition and respect which our institution’s name inspires… Harvard’s most recent and feted cultural contribution is chick lit written by an aspiring investment banker. We have fallen a long way from T.S. Eliot, and we should be ashamed. [Link]
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p>This is the way the marketing machine ends, not with a bang but a whimper. But in all things a silver lining. Since many Indians don’t believe in intellectual property, Viswanathan could have a tremendous career writing for Bollywood. Why, just the other night I saw a fantastic new Bollywood trailer about a hit man who hires a cabbie to drive him around town for a night. It’s called The Killer. I suggest investing and putting up some collateral.
<
p>Viswanathan has already done what Bollyscribes do all day — lift, separate and brownify (PDF – thanks, Zai):
| Sloppy Firsts | Opal Mehta desifies it for you |
| These conversations [with Marcus] are like a shot of Schnapps with a Tabasco sauce chaser. Short, sweet, and strange… | Talking to Sean had been like eating sev mixture, the Indian equivalent to Chex Party Mix, sharp and sweet and spicy all at once… |
| [Marcus] smelled sweet and woodsy, like cedar shavings. | … [Seans’s] cologne (sweet and woodsy and spicy, like the sandalwood key chains sold as souvenirs in India.) |
| …I’ve become the subject of countless finger-pointing rumors. I heard he’s has taught her everything he knows, so she can do every position in the Kama Sutra at college. | …I was the subject of every senior’s finger-pointing, whispered rumors… “I heard the first item on your resume was being able to hit every pose in the Kama Sutra.” |
Lift kara de
Here are some of the similar passages (PDF) which most news stories haven’t yet quoted:
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p>
| Sloppy Firsts | Opal Mehta |
| … in a truly sadomasochistic dieting gesture, they chose to buy their Diet Cokes at Cinnabon. | In a truly masochistic gesture, they had decided to buy Diet Cokes from Mrs. Fields… |
| “‘Omigod!’ shrieked Sara, taking a pink tube top emblazoned with a glittery Playboy bunny out of her shopping bag.” |
“…buy me a pink tube top emblazoned with a glittery Playboy bunny.” |
|
But then he tapped me on the shoulder, and said something so random that I was afraid he was back on the junk. “Did you know that the average American spends six months of his or her life waiting for red lights to turn green?” “What?” |
… he tapped me on the shoulder and said something so random I worried that he needed more expert counseling than I could provide.
“Did you know that the words amnesty and amnesia come from the same root?” “What?” |
| “Omigod! Let’s make sure junior year rocks,” she says. “Let’s make more time for each other. Friends are forever!”
… So I say even less at lunch than usual, totally aware of how alone I am. |
“Omigod!… We have to make more time for each other. Friends are forever!” I said even less than usual, aware of how totally alone I am. |
| Scotty has gotten into the habit of substituting curses with initials. | Every curse was either replaced by its initials or had a consonant cleverly inserted… |
| Upper Crust [as most popular group in school] | Upper-Cruster [as most popular group in school] |
| Dreg [as druggies] | Dreg [as druggies] |
Related posts: Innocent, Until Proven Otherwise, How Kaavya Viswanathan got rich, got caught, and got ruined, Buzzword bingo
princess diaries! now that’s going too far!….kaavya is playing mad libs straight up. No shame. But seriously…was she sitting in widner library copying into the wee hours or did a overworked 17st employee slip in the passages…or both?…
Leave her alone …. please …. you have all done enough harm. She should have learned her lesson. Close this topic please. Are you planning to make her take this to her grave.
Oops, I meant this.
It all remains to be seen…publishing has had a few too many nasty scandals recently. This is where spin comes in.
I honestly never heard about 17th street until Kaavya-gate. Apparently they are big in the YA scene which is rather foreign to me. Now there are rumors (that keep getting shot down as just that – rumors with no basis in fact) that 17th also packaged the same books that Kaavya allegedy plagiarized. In other words, 17th street plagiarized itself. But, then all parties involved with this (including Kaavya and people who’ve worked for 17th) say she wrote the book herself. I’m trying to find out myself!
“Packaging” doesn’t have to mean writing, by the way. They could just have come up with a really strong marketing plan and conceived of all the promotional material to launch a full-frontal assault onto the best-seller lists.
As for Walsh, she’s been around and has clout. It all depends on far this thing goes. If it’s still news two weeks from now, heads might roll.
Wow Pooja not sure what to say. That was definitely a bit too similar to disregard. Not the actual happening but the description of the happening which I can think of 3 different ways of saying off the top of my head right now if I had thunk of it originally.
Lifer,
…It would seem Walsh has quite a bit to answer for given her role as middleman..if Kaavya has to step up to the heat..they should all step up…especially as copywrite was joint…as an agent that could be interpreted as selling a client short…but then maybe kaavya couldn’t put two words together as seems to be the case…
So if she plagiarizes from many, many different books, is it no longer plagiarism?
There’s a parable here, but I can’t remember what.
FINALLY, someone who seems to know her personally! Would you be so kind as to give those of us who care and are concerned for it an update on her emotional health? I only ask because unlike the rest of us strangers, you seem to know her know her, since you seem to be sure that she can’t put two words together to communicate.
so many questions, this is not necessarily true or fair. We simply don’t know what Walsh knew. She could have just put Kaavya in touch with 17th street, then worked the phones to pitch her client to publishing houses. Working the phones and getting the best deal for the author is what an agent does, and in this regard, Walsh did a spectacular job. Is it her job to go over the manuscript with a magnifying glass? No.
Whatever deal Kaavya and 17th street came to, Walsh should have known about since she was the agent. This sharing copyright issue seems rather fishy to me, but again…this is all seperate from the plagiarism charges, and on those, Kaavya says she wrote the entire thing. Until she says otherwise, we simply can’t point fingers anywhere else.
Well, it’s over..the book deal has been canceled.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/05/02/entertainment/e135637D94.DTL
From the article above cited by “falooda”:
And that folks is all she wrote. NOW we can move on to other topics…until The Record releases its findings of course 🙂
OK, so it’s like ALOT of books. Maybe she should have marketed it as a straight up pomo chicklit mashup. Based on your favorite books! The Princess Diaries! Can you Keep a Secret! etc.
Lifer,
The only thought I have is complicity between walsh and 17th to change kaavya into something she is not (which is not plagiarism just gross)…17th style is ‘paint by the numbers writing…’….walsh would have known that…..walsh was the YA packager go to agent at WM…would Gluck have passed kaavya over to walsh if she could actually write in a unique voice?….
Hard to say without having read what Kaayva ostensibly first submitted. But here’s the thing…if her “unique voice” was being stifled, and she gave a shit – she could have said NO. Turn down the deal. Walk away. (Please let’s not make a rape analogy here, please. There isn’t one to be made, at all.)
Happens all the time, and more often than not, publishers will be conciliatory and give in. I know of an author (say “Pat”) who was the subject of a furious bidding war after his/her (one and only published) short story appeared in the New Yorker debut fiction issue. Pat went with one of the lowest bids because s/he felt that publisher ‘got it.’
I’m sympathetic to the pressures Kaavya might have faced, and as I said above, I think it was bizarre for the publisher to talk about her talent and accept chick-lit from her/packingcompany/combo. Her career goals don’t seem to involve writing, this whole thing seems to have been a happy lark for her, so she really might have been utterly clueless about what is expected of you when you claim to be an author and write something.
As for her age, I’m still astounded that S.E. Hinton wrote The Outsiders when she was 15, and saw it published when she was 16, so…let’s just say there are many precedents, and they don’t end this way.
That editor’s name is frankly scandalous. It’s no surprise he’s all mixed up in this…
It was pointed to me in another forum that John Kennedy Toole wrote “The Neon Bible” when he was 16. However, it wasn’t published until “A Confederacy of Dunces” won the pulitzer (quite some time after his death) generating interest.
Oh, wha..??
sorry!. Just beating our other dead horse 😉
that phrase makes me sad. i love horses. run free horse! run
I am now sure SM is successful in its strategy of attracting new mutineers by their Kaavya-sation. How about wriiting an article on Arjun Quota Singh?
I see no reason why this book cant be made into a movie, most movies american or ow are mashup. You will get fans of all the authors (each of them can be given say 100k each) Harold and Kumar go to white castle made decent money w/o having any plot… With the publicity it has received it can be an easier to sell.
However i doubt it that the central author would want to do that anymore… Ms viswanathan would mostlikely switch career. Its going to be very difficult to be taken seriously in libral arts/history etc. She still is in harvard. She can start next semester/year in another program.
She really went nuts with this thing, didn’t she? Jesus, girl, how could you be so naive?
In Viswanathan’s book, page 59 reads: “Every inch of me had been cut, filed, steamed, exfoliated, polished, painted, or moisturized. I didn’t look a thing like Opal Mehta. Opal Mehta didn’t own five pairs of shoes so expensive they could have been traded in for a small sailboat.”
Thanks, mom!
So many sources….was it Kaavya to blame or Alloy ingeniously padding up her concept/skeletal framework of a book? Of course, that leaves open the Q of whether Kaaya is the real author of everyword in Opal M.
I think language log had an interesting article on the fact that this might be a witch hunt (I use the word advisedly) and on what is plagiarism and the inflitration of “common creative space”.
It would have been different if she did not hide the sources, Like what Pdiddy does. Her central theme still seems new…So if she were to some how hat tip the orignial sources had to be there. Citations for each paragraphs are crazy and impracticle, so an alternative solution would have been needed. But the fact she went on tv and offered to change opened a can of worms for her. (A) she had to acknowledge that it was not her words/structure, (B) she makes a case that her story is different and can be redone with a different structure. Its too late now, but i dont see why any one cant buy story from other sources and make it a better one… Had she done that, chance are she wouldnt be seen as an original and perhaps would have a tougher time w/ the harvard academic crowd. But her target audience probably wouldnt mind….
Just checked amazon.com, this book is currently ranked #40 on their top seller list…i guess there really is no such thing as bad publicity…
the book may be a good investment. you do have a point on bad publicity, but in her case its different b/c she was not established.
Well if this wasnt her first book it wouldnt have mattered. Remember the frequent pbs history lady, she still can crank out works for publishing..,
Hugh grant still acts, so does charlie sheen no careers were destroyed when they were caught hiring prostitutes Marthas got her career back Donald trump athe 2wice bankrupt fella can still have people lining up to be his apprentice. The environmentalist salman khan will still show up here, and shake his ass on screen and people will still go to his show…. I just recomend some go there dressed up as a chinkara. its different for established folks
In 1996, I began writing my novel, Final Arrangements, based on my own experiences in the funeral trade. Dunne Books, a division of St. Martin’s Press, gave me a small advance and published Final Arrangements in 2002. My female lead, Natalie, drove an odd funeral car and took pictures of dead people in the funeral home. In 2001, a few months before my book was released, Six Feet Under made its debut on HBO. Apparently, the family who ran the TV funeral home had a daughter who drove an odd funeral car and took pictures of dead people in the funeral home. This was one of many similarities between my novel and Six Feet Under that were brought to my attention by fans. I was about to contact my publisher when a woman publicly claimed that Six Feet Under had been stolen from her idea. By that time, my original manuscript could have been all over the internet because I had participated in an online critique group. So, did Alan Ball plagarize a plagarization of my story? I figured it must be that all funeral home owners have daughters who drive odd funeral cars and take pictures of dead people in the funeral home. But that’s not all. Apparently, Bill Clinton stole my idea for having an affair with Monica Lewinsky, and Timothy Leary stole my idea for having cremated remains shot into space. Hunter S. Thompson stole my idea for killing himself, and Ken Kesey stole my idea for contracting hepatitis C. Worst of all, Cocoa Krispies stole my idea for staying crunchy even in milk.
Only $59.95 (plus shipping) on eBay….
I’m still amazed at Anna. A “wrong” is a “wrong” even if you’re 19. I’m 20, and I have six papers due in 2 days, hey you don’t see me plagarizing. Her age isn’t her defense. And I don’t get this whole packaging statement, either way if someone else wrote something and you put your name on it, is that not plagirizing? I don’t see then how she is the scapegoat of this scenerio?
The media is have a field day with this is because she refuse to die down, she refuse to just say “hey I thought i was the shit, and I won’t get caught but opps I did” I’m sorry. What’s this crap on photographic memory? If she does, I hope she has like a 4.0 or something. No need to go to class or anything.
Also, I saw the Today show with her, suddenly she’s using the “Desi American” stance? Brown isn’t the new black, and I really hate when people play race off when they are in some sort of trouble. Also, her story doesn’t even have to do with being brown or not. She can relate to being more of the elite class that being brown. Not many ‘brown’ kids get tutoring to get into ivy league colleges.
Why are you defending her? What’s there to defend? I’m sure she has her lawyers for that.
In the end, I feel pity for her, she is going through a lot, but hey when you actually step into the public domain don’t expect that they will be lovey dovey with you. It’s a double bladed sword. But I would have respect for her if she came clean, kill the BS excuses, because it’s clear no one is believing her.
I heard a wise and thoughtful death penalty lawyer once say that nobody is as bad as the worst thing they’ve ever done. Surely it’s possible simultaneously to hold in one’s head that thought along with the thought that what she seems to have done shouldn’t be excused or condoned. (Let’s also not lose our heads completely — it’s not as if she, say, misled the entire planet into thinking that Iraq had WMDs before going to war.)
Oe, Manish bhaiyya, I’m unclear about whether you knew that the site with the Nicole Ritchie article is a humor site and all the articles are made up. Just checking…
Anna, for someone who’s got a problem with scapegoating, you’re sure comfortable venting your condescension in regard to an ENTIRE GENRE of literature. It suggests not only your ignorance of the genre but also a knee-jerk elitism which I find surprising from someone who usually writes so thoughtfully and is so critical of mainstream prejudices.
More generally, I’m tempted to assume that the same folks here who are scoffing at “chick lit” (a name applied, in a gesture typical of the same old sexist bullshit we’ve always lived with, to 90% of all recent novels written by women that target young female readers) would have sneered at Austen and the Brontes as “lady scribblers” who wrote ten-hanky trash. Lots of ’em did back in the day. Lots of ’em said that all those books were the same.
Me? I say all novels featuring a group of initially hostile males who fight, fuck, and ultimately bond during wartime pretty much sound the same, and we can’t expect anything original of them — from the Iliad right on through All Quiet on the Western Front to whichever “dick lit” novel is currently having its ass kissed by all you literary critics extraordinaire.
Apologies for the vulgarity… seeing the genre bashed just gets me riled.
What about mary shelley – didn’t she write Frankenstein at age 18? I read Frankenstein at age 18.
Simmie, I know where you’re coming from, but I think there’s some basis for the condescension expressed for chicklit. No one, for example, would label Alice Munro as a member of the chickliterati, even though she writes so much about women and relationships. It’s not the gender of the writer, nor the subject matter that qualifies a work as chicklit – its a fundamental lack of, I guess, intellectual seriousness. And there is a term for fluffy work written by males – lad lit. I’ve read it more than once in book reviews.
I wish this were the case, but I’ve definitely seen one of her books sitting along with other (inarguably chick lit) novels, under a bright pink banner screaming “Reads for the beach!”
More generally, the cause of my irritation stems from the fact that chick lit doesn’t originate as a label that discerning readers apply to books; rather, it’s a category used by the publishing industry to describe a genre — a really broad genre, which is held together pretty much only by the fact that its authors and readers are female. (Check out GalleyCat for instance, to see how the industry uses chick lit as a publishing category in internal conversations.)
Tashie and Manish:
Thanks for the explanation and the links. 🙂
Simmie:
If you think there is more to chick-lit than what has been discussed here, could you give me some names of some nice books which fall under the classification?
Also, you said:
(a name applied, in a gesture typical of the same old sexist bullshit we’ve always lived with, to 90% of all recent novels written by women that target young female readers)
Does that include romance novels? For I have never seen them classfied as chick-lit. Nor authors like Amanda Quick [and all the other names she uses], Julie Garwood, Johanna Lindsey, Iris Johansen etc., etc. Another related question is what kind of books are supposed to appeal to ‘younger female readers’? I was one of those some years ago, and I haven’t seen any of my favourite female authors from that age [Elizabeth Moon, Madeline Le’Engle, Ayn Rand, McKinsey, Caldwell etc] ever classified as chick-lit either.
As for Iliad and All Is Quiet On the Western Front, or Ilium, or HMS Ulysses, and other books in that vein, I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
General:
Taylor Caldwell’s Romance of Atlantis was written when she was at a ridiculously young age as well – 12 or 15. And it is a fine book by any standards.
Simmie, Well if that’s true, it’s depressing. However, there’s encouragement to be derived from the fact that during the era when ‘authoresses’ were patronized with such venom that they wrote under male pseudonyms, the truly great female voices survived. So – if you’re a writer – don’t let the limitations of the publishing industry and its accomplices upset you.
If that silly girl goes ahead and does something stupid, Sepia Mutiny – you’d probably not feel guilty for adding fuel to the fire. Just doing our job, right?
I mean – who the F— cares about copyright except the publishing industry?! there are other people on this planet you know. This is not fraud, this is schadenfraude. We are deriving greater pleasure from her FALL than her RISE.
Somebody send her some flowers, fer chrissake, or stop calling yourself Sepia.
You missed the original. I think it’s lame to think that SM of all places derives pleasure from anyones downfall. I don’t know a single forum on the web that oozes desi pride like SM. And not everyone has to agree on anything but pride is something that is resounding on this board.
Yes, I’m a condescending, ignorant, elitist hypocrite. Tell me how you really feel. I stand by my elitist, ignorant, knee-jerking about the genre. The truth is, if it has a red-dress on it, chances are, it’s a formulaic, predictable, light-as-cotton-candy, easy read. That’s why bitchy elitist ME picks them up occasionally, for when I don’t feel like thinking. Ah, yes. There is the reason why I and my elitist brethren (who else has mainstream prejudices?) condescend about chick and dick lit. It doesn’t add a damned thing to your life, brain or heart, but it’s a pleasant way to blow through a few hours.
And no, just because it’s on a display table with something inconsequential like a sign which says “for the beach!” or because the person penning it has two XX chromosomes, that doesn’t almost automatically make it chick lit. Clever though, by making chick lit practically EVERY book written for and by females, you’ve made me seem EXTRA evil for being the elitist wench who finds the genre distasteful. Your comment is the first I’ve heard of this sweeping phenomenon which sticks Jhumpa in with Kaavya. Speaking of the villainess of the week, the “genre” which you are angry about me attacking isn’t sitting somewhere, potentially crying or having ideations right now. The “genre” will do just fine. I’m not sure that “my” scapegoat will and I’ll be damned if anyone here makes me feel bad for having such a concern.
I have an issue with the priorities of certain people who will heatedly flay a 19-year old for a stupid mistake which really has no effect on my daily life (beyond having to respond to comments like yours) but not register to vote, give up their SUV or otherwise give two shits about REAL problems.
I cynically wonder how many of the people who talk about the lack of ethics involved here bought their books at a megastore which put an indie bookstore out of business (it’s extra awesome if that chain is walmart, since their buying power ensures a quiet but deadly assault on freedom of speech and diverse viewpoints. buy hey! the shampoo is cheap!) I smirk at the number of times her much-ballyhooed advance comes up, as if the money came from our taxes or savings account, as if moral outrage over a lack of ethics should somehow be affected by her erstwhile fortune.
I roll my eyes until I injure myself at all the braying about admissions counselors, when it’s really no different from the several thousands of dollars spent at Kaplan et al, to achieve the same goal of “getting in”. The sick thing is, she IS a target. She’s a perfect storm of privilege, pussy and pulchritude, so she’s EXTRA fun to fry! I am outraged because though I can’t prove it, in my gut I feel like if she were male or white or poor or (your adjective here), this would be orders of magnitude less controversial.
I’m one of the ONLY ones saying fuck you to the “mainstream” and all their prejudices against this girl. She is guilty, most of you say of one crime while I say another, but that sad truth STILL doesn’t justify the reaction she has inspired, which I’m STILL slightly repulsed and mostly astonished by.
I’m not sure what you mean by “nice”. In keeping with the accusations leveled at the genre here, I’ll assume you mean books that don’t sound like they came off a production line. There’s nothing of Megan McCafferty or Kaavya Viswanathan in I Don’t Know How She Does It (Pearson), which is (in my opinion) a pretty depressing meditation on the unfinished project of feminism (or, less controversially, on the difficulties faced by contemporary working mothers), disguised as a zippy take on an upper-crust British executive’s midlife crisis. Prep has been marketed as chick-lit (to the author’s vociferous protests…), and as a former boarding school student, I thought it was a pretty interesting take on the weirdness of that educational arrangement. We Thought You Would Be Prettier (Laurie Notaro) is quite acerbic; Getting Over It (Anna Maxted) is, underneath all the romance, a surprisingly thoughtful exploration of what it’s like to lose a parent (didn’t like her last two books though); The Dominant Blonde (Alisa Kwitney) is intelligent fun; and you know what? I think Bridget Jones’ Diary was pretty damn clever and original, even if Fielding’s other novels — and the movies — blow chunks.
You’re right, it doesn’t include romance, which accounts for 40% of the mass market paperback industry (up to 60% by RWA statistics, but they’re obviously biased) — and which hosts some truly amazing talents, like Judith Ivory/Judy Cuevas and Laura Kinsale, yet which is continually slammed as consisting solely of trite hackneyed crap, just like — surprise! — chick lit. Seeing a pattern here yet? When a genre has a predominantly female readership and a predominantly female authorship, all we ever hear about is how unoriginal it is, how we shouldn’t take it seriously. Take two male-dominated and often jeered at genres: sci-fi and westerns (as some of the names you drop suggest, the makeup of sci-fi authorship and readership is changing somewhat — I’ll get to that in a second). Now consider the fact that major newspapers do review sci-fi (even the NY Times has succumbed, with considerable fanfare, this year) and notable (read: big-name) westerns; but NONE at present review romance, even the most notable (read: big-name) releases. (The Boston Globe did briefly, but not anymore.) I think it’s inarguable that no other genre’s public reception can match the scorn heaped on the two most explicitly female-dominated genres, namely romance and chick lit. The fact that people can so casually label it all “trash”, without anyone speaking up in its defense (usually), seems incredibly telling.
As for sci-fi and fantasy (Moon et al), they’re really starting to open up to female authors, but the explosion has been a long time in coming. Even now, particularly when it comes to sci-fi, you’ll find many female authors who choose to use their initials or gender-neutral names (I posted a list once on a book discussion forum; right now the only one I can think of is CS Friedman, but I promise you, there are several) to make sure they don’t scare away male readers.
You know what the funny thing is? I’m not particularly devoted to either chick lit or romance. I read across genres, quite enthusiastically; my list of favorite authors includes John Banville, Anthony Trollope, Octavia Butler, Judy Cuevas, and Rohinton Mistry (yes, I admit, I thought A Fine Balance was brilliant. So there!). Perhaps that’s why I get so worked up about this issue of dismissing a whole genre as crap. When you read very widely, you start to realize that “literary fiction” is just as much a genre — bound by its own particular conventions — as mysteries or horror or sci-fi or romance or chick lit; that every genre has hacks and geniuses; and that this literary caste system is a pretty recent invention, and does favors only for the lazy reader. For everyone else, the fear of contamination — “Oh my God, you’re reading what?” — ultimately robs us of the opportunity to pursue good fiction no matter the label on the spine.
And you know what? Maybe if we all read more widely, this KV thing wouldn’t have happened, because no one (Alloy or Kaavya herself, who knows) would have thought it would possibly fly. After all, low expectations breed low achievements.
I think you’ve missed my point, or I didn’t explain it clearly enough. I’m taking exception to the fact that it’s considered a legitimate critique to condemn the works of an entire genre as unoriginal. I find it suspect that the genres to which this critique is generally directed are genres that host predominantly female authors. (But nowhere do I imply that Lahiri’s works are slotted in the same genre as Viswanathan’s, either by the publishing industry, or by readers in general.) I find it particularly baffling that you appear to lodge this critique in defense of an author who plagiarized someone else’s work. I’m trying to think of an analogy to illustrate the illogicality of this: “Every cookie in Mrs. Fields tastes pretty much the same, ergo it’s less offensive for Kaavya to steal a Mrs. Fields cookie than to steal a cookie from a good bakery — and then to resell that cookie to me”? Nope, it just sounds silly. Obviously I’m not understanding your point, for which I apologize. I thought I did, until your last post there, which seems to take on a whole host of issues and hence probably isn’t directed entirely at me. If it is, though: Anna. Seriously. I appreciate your work on this blog and I love your writing, which is probably why I was so provoked by your comments on the genre, which yes, I’m sorry, did seem elitist and therefore completely out of character with the image I’ve formed of you. But I don’t know you, so ultimately, it is nothing personal — just a little healthy debate, exactly what SepiaMutiny does best.
And thus endeth the lesson. Hai Ram, salaam and amen.
Simmie, Your second last para in post 140 is brilliantly expressed. The interesting thing is that the ‘literary caste system’ is penalizing those at the ‘top’ more than anyone. The audience for what is classified as literary fiction is shrinking. Why? Perhaps because it’s been drained of all the blood, gore, sex, spice that used to go into literature and which now tend to stamp a work as ‘horror’, ‘adventure’, ‘chicklit’ etc.
Perhaps because people have so many other forms of entertainment (cable, video-games, etc.) , even Hollywood is crapping it’s pants because people aren’t buying movie tickets? Look…what are you doing right now? You’re reading a blog. This might just be the natural order of things, so no judgement on my part. Seriously. But if you are reading this blog, you are not reading a book. You are not reading a book you paid for or took out of the library.
In all the cacaphony of entertainment marketing out their, publishing has limited resources and needs to package books so they’ll find their most eager audiences. Preferably faster and cheaper. Labeling genres is the easiest way to do that. And bookstores, by the way, have tremendous clout in how books are catagorized. Call a book chick-lit, and B&N will order 5,000 copies. Call the same book the “a sensitive yet humorous examination of relationships by a fresh voice in women’s fiction” and watch B&N order 50.
Literary fiction has all the gore, sex, blood and spice that it always did. Maybe more. (Read Joyce Carol Oates lately?) But there are so many things clamoring for your attention (YouTube! Snakes on a Plane!) or at least clogging up newspaper/magazine pages that used to be devoted to book reviews….it’s just that much harder for every literary novel to get the chance it deserves.
In all the cacaphony of entertainment marketing out there, I mean.
This is ridiculous. The similarity with Kinsella’s passages are a stretch of one’s imagination. The similarity is that they both used English. There’s clear evidence of plagiarism of McCafferty’s work but this one seems like a weak case.
It’s one passage, not multiple. Re-read.
Deviating a bit why are movies “inspired” from another movie or “reference” another movie or are “paying homage”. That awful Kutcher-Peet flick for example seemed to have ripped off every delayed romance flick before it without ever acknowledging it. Books on the other hand somehow seem to be required to be pristine in phrase and plot. I still think Alloy has a lot to answer for regarding the final “product”. And Ms. Viswanathan – not for plagiarism – but for jumping on to the mega deal packaged author bandwagon. And if she was so inspired maybe she should have come clean and done something like Zadie Smith’s straightforward update of Forster. Girl, put in the hard miles first.
I strongly suspect that it was Kaavya’s colleagues, and not her, who did the plagiarizing. So read the following article before you jump to any conclusions.
http://www.harvardindependent.com/ViewArticle.aspx?ArticleID=9906
“I smirk at the number of times her much-ballyhooed advance comes up, as if the money came from our taxes or savings account, as if moral outrage over a lack of ethics should somehow be affected by her erstwhile fortune.”
You’re right Anna, however you can list all the injustices in the world, and all the unethical things that happen, and it still won’t negate the fact of what she did. I’m not looking at what she did in realtivity to what happens in the “real” world. Once again, what she did was wrong, it was ethically wrong and sure it didn’t cause world world 3, but that doesn’t negate the fact of the “wrongness”
“She’s a perfect storm of privilege, pussy and pulchritude, so she’s EXTRA fun to fry!” I’m sorry if i was supposed to feel her pain for being privilege and female, but I dont. I’m sorry that she’s been such a target for stealing other’s authors works, I think it’s blown out of proportion, but nevertheless she did steal such works and call it her own.
I don’t feel sorry for Paris Hilton, and I don’t think anyone is expected to ‘feel sorry’ for her.