I. Introduction
— Kaavya Viswanathan, April 26, 2006 [Link]
II. Conflict
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[via Harvard Independent; thanks, Rekha] |
Opal Mehta |
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All day the house had smelled of spices, and now before our eyes lay the resulting combustion of all that kitchen chemistry. The feast my mother had conjured up was extravagant, and I realized how hungry I was; I wasn’t a big fan of Indian food, at least not on a daily basis, but today the sight of it was pure poetry. Brown sugar roti and cloud-puff puris just itching to be popped. Coconut rice fluffed up over the silver pot like a sweet-smelling pillow. Samosas transparent, peas bundling just below the surface. Spinach with nymph-finger cloves of garlic that sank like butter on the tongue. A vat of cucumber raita, the two-percent yogurt thickened with sour cream (which my mom added when we had guests, though she denied it when asked; I’d seen the empty carton, not a kitten lick left). And the centerpiece: a deep serving dish of lamb curry, the pieces melting tenderly off the bone. |
… the house had smelled of spices all day, and when we sat down at the dining room table, I nearly combusted at the sight of the extravagant feast my mom had conjured up. Usually I wasn’t a big fan of Indian food, but today I was suddenly starving. The table creaked with the weight of crisp, brown rotis and feather-light, puffy puris. A basket of my favorite kheema naan sat beside the clouds of cashew and sultana-studded coconut rice in an enormous pot. There was plump okra fried in oil and garlic till it melted like butter on the tongue, aloo curry studded with peppercorns and glistening chopped chilis, and a crock of raita, a cool, delicious mixture of yogurt and sour cream, bursting with finely chopped onions and cucumbers. The centerpiece was a deep dish of mutton curry, the meat (my mom only used halal bought from an Arab butcher in Edison) already falling off the bone. |
Born Confused
III. Climax
‘I really thought the words were my own. I guess it’s just been in my head… I feel as confused as anyone about it, because it happened so many times.’ [Link]
On national TV last week (thanks, BEAH):
‘All I can tell is the truth.’
IV. Resolution
A Harvard University student’s “chick lit” novel has been permanently withdrawn and her two-book deal canceled, publisher Little, Brown and Company announced Tuesday… “Little, Brown and Company will not be publishing a revised edition of How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life by Kaavya Viswanathan, nor will we publish the second book under contract…” [Link]
First– thanks Manish! I was waiting for somebody to come out with the comparison to Born Confused.
Second–
I don’t think KV was ever “much-lauded”, so much as “much-talked-about” based on the honorarium, etc. Just like Backstreet Boys.
However, those brothers dance a lot better than KV seems to be doing… đ
but perhaps in more troubling matters, is it commonplace to add sour cream to raita?? As an pretty jammin’ cook, I gasp at the thought.
hey desidancer – do you know how to make yoghurt – i saw some online recipes but they say i have to get active starter and a lot of popular yoghurts are “dead”… tres confused. how do i tell – I dont want to waste 2 gallons of milk?
also, … do you know how to make eggplant bharta without using a ton of oil. i saw the recipe and it freaked me out – i’m never having that dish in a restaurant again –
Desidancer [#102] – That is a very valid concern indeed. I can’t help but think that any such connocyion would ruin the taste of the sour cream and the raita.
But what has me worried is this:
The table creaked with the weight of crisp, brown rotis and feather-light, puffy puris
I wonder what was in those rotis to make the table creak so? The puris after all were feather light….or maybe, just maybe, there was a problem with the table?
O what a tangled web we weave
Desidancer,
a lot of people i know add just a dash of sour cream to many dishes made with yogurt, like raita…but its like a little secret that no one talks about…if you ask someone, (who’s not gonna break it down for you), they’ll just say my homemade yogurt tends to be very smooth & creamy
to all those fronters, the jig is up, i tell ya đ
I’ve casually followed the furor over Kaavya and I do think enough is enough. But after seeing her NBC interview with Katie Couric I’m confused.
I can’t decipher if (1) Her publishing house handlers trained her SO well to defend her plagiarism with the heartfelt and sincere defense of “internalizing” other writers’ words, that she sounds robotically programmed to parrot out this lame explanation. (2) She came up with the “internalization” defense on her own, and genuinely believes it, which is immature at best, and delusional at the very worst. (3) She doesn’t give a rat’s ass about getting caught with her chaddis down and is offering up a banal and half-hearted explanation of what she did.
Her literary career may be over for now, but perhaps she will resurface in 5-10 years or so, a wizened and more cynical version of the youthful teen, to write a blistering novel about a young Indian-American author who writes a fake book, gets caught, has her life ruined, and picks up the pieces as a young twenty-something reclusive doctor.
Call it “How Kaavya V. Got Caught, Lost Her Life, and Got It Back Again Like A Phoenix Rising From the Ashes.” That’s the Marion Barry defense… watch, she will be back in 5 years time like the erstwhile former DC mayor after he we busted for smoking crack with a hooker.
dhaavak I think the thing with living yo-gurt is that you can make lots from one batch of the bacteria whatnot, you just have to leave a bit over each time. Is that right?
I just made myself laugh. Me talking about cooking, hohoho. Hey DD do jammin cooks make jam? Because I have a theory that all jam-makers are psychopaths.
I’m also devastated no one liked my Kaavya-rip-off of Sepia Mutiny banner. Boohoo you heartless folk. May sour cream infect all your raita.
What’s so wrong with discussing this? I don’t get this sanctimony about being “above discussing this”. It’s an interesting topic. It’s not everyday a freshman at an Ivy League school gets a high dollar book deal, only to have it known that the whole thing was just a compilation of other people’s work. I would have found this story interesting even if she wasn’t brown. Being that she’s Indian makes it all the more interesting because we have all seen this sort of ambitious person that is willing to do anything to get where they want (I’ve seen a lot of cheating Indians).
Moreso, I have no idea how anyone can still believe she’s not a lying plagerizer. She’s obviously not creative and has no originality, but it makes me suspicious when she’s used a hodgepodge of passages from SEVERAL books…I mean, it’s as though she’s writing a story for a middle school creative writing class. Hell, even then atleast I wrote my own damn story (even if it was complete crap).
I wanted to add to the other post that I didn’t mean to imply that most Indians are cheaters or liars. But I meant that we’ve all seen this sort of personality before (of all races) that is willing to do what she can, ethics be damned.
Oai! thou who curseth my raita, may you spend the rest of your career shaving the back of a flea ridden lab baboon
Somebody tell Kaavya to take Angelina Jolie’s offer to get away from all this and spend a few months in the resort in Namibia that she and Pitts have occupied.
o i liked it and would have left a comment … but was disconcerted by kush’s one eye staring at me – very unnerving.
Hey hey hey, I’ve thought of a link between Kaavya Viswanathan and sour-cream/yoghurt condiments…
Paperback raita!
I hope you’re all Beatles fans. Or William Rhodes’. Yes! I made a literary joke! w00t!
Almost funny. So close.
But, no. Opal never made it to paperback. sigh
Just so you know Salmaan & Megan … When the game is over the king, queen and the pawn end up in the same box.
Not sure if this was posted already/elsewhere, but it’s enough to make a book-lover cry:
link
Ooooh – like Nancy Drew!
That officially makes it the funniest joke I’ve ever made!!!!!one one one
Papal Mehta, you’ve made my day. And your name reminds me of the pontiff.
Side B of the Rubber Soul.
As an aside, I love this photo of KV.
Holy sheeeet. Now that’s brilliant.
Smokin’!
BB: the admiration is mutual (a medic AND a breaker? Damn!). Do your thing son.
Ennis you dirty boy, she’s a youngster. I reckon the oldest a guy can be to have an interest in her is…ooh 24 or so. Just picking a number out of the air. I prefer her other ones, this one gives her a bit of prognathism.
I submitted this comment in response to the Harvard Crimson’s editorial today that argued for expelling Kaavya. The Crimson censored all but two paragraphs of my letter.
Their article: http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=513317
You guys are disgusting. To attack the girl at this point, for something that has nothing to do with school, is purely sadistic. Kaavya is not responsible for promoting the book in this way, and it is intellectually dishonest of you to implicate her in that. She behaved precisely as any of us, or any young person, would have: She was excited and she permitted the publisher and packager to substantially change her book, sell it under her name, and promote it in the obvious way. Your self-righteous tone throughout this editorial is entirely undeserved. It is worth recalling the obvious fact that we still do not have any idea who is responsible for this relatively minor infraction, and it might very well be the case that two large companies that would likely face ruin if their full involvement became clear have pressured her into taking the fall. In any case, even if she did the borrowing herself, which seems improbable for a variety of reasons, it is a small offense. No one will defend copying, but to borrow adjectives, girl-talk, and sentence structure for at most 0.5-1% of her book is far from the great crime you make it out to be.
And as for HarvardĂâs values, give me a break. HarvardĂâs values were compromised long ago, as you well know. Dozens if not hundreds of genuine criminals, from Admiral Yamamoto to Henry Kissinger to George W. Bush, to arbitrarily select just three, have been educated at Harvard. Few outrages in our country, from the Enron scandal to the lies about WMD, fail to involve a Harvard man. We routinely admit people, either as graduate and professional students or as speakers, with backgrounds in criminal regimes, sometimes even the people engaged in carrying out the atrocities. Just in the last few months, Harvard Law has hosted and considered hiring people accused of war crimes. There are no real values left here to defend. Harvard is a great institution, a place where brilliant people can come together to discuss important happenings, and IĂâm not suggesting we shouldnĂât allow even these criminals to come here, join us, and speak to us. But to pretend that Harvard stands on high principles and distinguishes right from wrong is comical. There are undoubtedly a thousand Harvard grads a day who do something incomparably worse than what Kaavya is accused of doing. Perhaps youĂâd like to advocate taking back their degrees?
Every so often, a monstrous event reminds us of the sickness, moral and intellectual bankruptcy, profound political disorientation, and outright sadism of American society. The current media assault on Kaavya surpasses even the Terri Schiavo incident in this regard. The pattern is unmistakable: the American media lines up unanimously (always a sign that itĂâs wrong) in channeling its collective anger and collective stupidity on a single, entirely undeserving target. Someone is chosen almost at random, someone whose acts are out of all proportion to the campaign of denunciation. Every hack writer, every obedient fool who has never once uttered an original or oppositional thought, from the Crimson staff up to yesterdayĂâs empty and mindless NY Times editorial by John Kenney, joins self-righteously in the campaign, foaming at the mouth with ignorant and grotesque rage. Silent on every real injustice of any significance, they explode with fury on this trivial issue, whether out of genuine political confusion or out of a conscious and malicious desire to promote ignorance and disorientation among the population. The darkest and ugliest instincts of the American people are thus called forth, and soon a frenzy of stupidity and monumental sadism begins. Kaavya Viswanathan, born in India and raised in Scotland, has had thrust upon her the burden of American societyĂâs collective sins, its decadence, its anger, its confusion, its hatred, and perhaps above all, its complete lack of any rational or progressive outlet for the legitimate hostility that millions of average people feel toward what is happening in their country.
The content of every editorial the Crimson has written in the five years I’ve been here at Harvard has been nothing but a plagiarism of the official attitude of the big business media, or at most the right wing of the Democratic Party. That a publication that lives solely on cowardly subservience to the views of its future employers, parroting them relentlessly on every major political question, would accuse another student whose crime — if it is her own — consists of borrowing descriptions, is outrageous. We have an odd view of plagiarism and of intellectual honesty in general if we think that copying adjectives and the silly mutterings of teenage girls is a more serious offense than the prostituting oneĂâs mind in the service of power and parroting the official attitude on every issue of significance.
Furthermore, to bring this up yet again, why don’t you cowards call for Dershowitz to be run out of town? He stole the research of another writer and passed it off as his own research. But more than that, he knowingly stole from a fraudulent, pseudo-academic work, a book inspired by a desire to lie in the interests of a racist outlook. When presented with indisputable evidence that he had stolen research from this vile book, Dershowitz called his accuser an anti-Semite and a lunatic, insisted that passing off the research of others as your own, without acknowledging where you found the references, is standard academic practice, and told the media he thinks this sort of dishonesty is Ăâfunny.Ăâ Just because Kaavya canĂât file a frivolous lawsuit against you or denounce you as a Nazi does not give you any right to attack her and not him. DershowitzĂâs crime is considerably more serious, as it is both of an explicitly academic nature and is an attempt to deceive for deliberate political purposes. It also, needless to say, is sold on the basis of his personality and his Harvard ties.
Finally, shame on Salman Rushdie for joining this repulsive bandwagon. Mr. Rushdie, for those who still imagine him to be a great left-wing South Asian intellectual, has in the last four years joined the chorus of corrupt ex-liberals who have been cheerleading for Bush’s criminal war in Iraq. In the process, Rushdie’s tortured justifications for starting and now continuing a war of mass murder, torture and rape have parroted all of the oldest lies in the imperialist book. His political writings on the subject, like yours, are nothing but a plagiarism of every act of intellectual prostitution for the ruling classes, every word muttered by apologists for centuries. There are no novel thoughts or ideas here, and if we are to speak of plagiarism, this is plagiarism of a far more serious sort. Apparently too cowardly to speak the truth about and condemn a monstrous and criminal war, Mr. Rushdie has suddenly found he has the courage to go on TV and lend his prestige to denouncing a defenseless 19-year-old girl. YouĂâre a brave man, Mr. Rushdie.
Not to be a heretic, but dont know if Rubber Soul holds up as well as Pet Sounds. But ‘In My Life’ is elegant and beautiful.
sirc – you’re killing me here :-)- but i did list the b-side, usually the overflow – still exquisite tho’ – of course, it isnt the music – but the remembrances of things past that we cherish, no – i once had a girl, or should i say she once had me … and boy – did she have me – chuckle – i think i could write a novella with beatles lyrics
For all the beatles fans, the decider song, if you haven’t heard it yet. link
That was a corker SG. dhaavak, please write that novella made of Beatles lyrics, that’s plagiarism we can all enjoy.
You should have done yourself a favor and just censored yourself. Drivel.
i wouldn’t call it drivel– i’d call it a future blog post. the most successful “letters”, i.e. the ones which get published, are usually a bit shorter, to accomodate tiny attention spans. i do think they were probably killing some of your better points, but they (and evilAbhi) will just call it “editing”.
so? have you chosen your blog’s name yet? đ
The Crimson censored all but two paragraphs of my letter.
It’s not censorship when you go over 1,000 words for a letter đ
Seriously WIlliam Morris and Walsh has LOT to answer for..
Ms. Walsh and the rest of William MorrisĂâ literary department do a great deal of business with Alloy, which involves some complicated accounting. In the case of Opal Mehta, Ms. Walsh would have taken her standard 15 percent of Ms. ViswanathanĂâs reported $500,000 two-book deal, which works out to $75,000 for Ms. Walsh. It could be argued that William Morris was not necessarily representing Ms. ViswanathanĂâs best interests by sending her to a company that could potentially take 30 to 50 percent of the advance as well.
ĂâTo my mind, there is no conflict of interest,Ăâ Ms. Walsh said. ĂâThe relationship between the book packager and the author are very similar to the collaboration between two authors, or between an expert and an author, in that their interests are completely aligned in the project.Ăâ
Uhhh…”Harvard,” if that is your real name, George Bush went to Yale, not Harvard. I think your left-wing nuttiness is blinding you. Some of those issues you bring up relating to Harvard may be true, but in most cases their evilness occured after they went to Harvard. You can toss out Dershowitz, though. Good riddance.
I’m guessing the Kaavya issue regards the fact that she is a current matriculated student and the fact that HARVARD has been affiliated with her and the book so tightly that one would assume the title of the book is How Opal Got Into Harvard. All you hear is HARVARD HARVARD HARVARD.
So the Crimson is likely advocating that the university circle the wagons and throw the girl out, that way they can continue to perpetuate the myth that a quality educational institution is based solely on merit, rather than money, connections, class, and nepotism.
Seriously, does everything have to go back to the war in Iraq? I think you’re confusing the popularity of this issue with how much value people put in it.
Ditto.
Yale AND Harvard (for graduate school). But he wasn’t a President back then, either. So unless Harvard goes back to the future on his ass, they don’t even have a case to ‘expell’ the President.
People are trying to sell this book as a collectible now. Check out Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0316059889/ref=buy_pb_n_/104-3864403-4688704?condition=new
wonder what happened to Jayson Blair and the NYT scandal…looky here…
Here he says:
“The scandal’s over now, and I’m alone,” he continues, quieter. “There’s a great sense of loss in my life. Out of all the sources and colleagues and friends I had in New York I can count on the fingers of one hand the people I still have contact with. There’s only one person at the Times. You have a life and… it’s crushed in your hand.” He pauses. “By my own hand I should say, again.”
Wonder if this will happen to KV?
Anyone read Babyji by Abha Dawesar? It happens to be about a young desi girl who gets kissed, gets wild, and gets into Harvard (kinda…it’s implied). It’s fabulous…totally original, intelligent, and gorgeously written. But no, I seriously doubt that KV lifted the plot from this one!
As a long time reader of Sepia Mutiny I am disappointed to see a post of such intellectual shallowness as this on here. The analysis presented above is no evidence of plagiarism at all — it looks more a case of Rumsfeld-type over-zealous witch-hunting or whatever. And I’m saying this even after I’m convinced of plagiarism in the other instances (as demonstrated in the comparisons with passages from Megan McCafferty’s, in the Harvard Crimson articles and elsewhere).
Anyone even remotely South Asian has probably heard or read phrases like “smelled of spices,” “melted like butter on the tongue”, “puffy-puris” a hundred times before in their lives! Seriously, enough already.
Elihu, if I may ask, what do you do for a living? Does it involve evaluating evidence? Does it (I tremble to ask) involve making decisions, based on the presented evidence, that could affect the lives or livelihoods of others?
Cause I’m very confused here….??? I’m not trying to diss you. I’m just truly mystified.
Do you see that, applying elementary principles of statistical probability, the later of these two texts is incontrovertibly derived from the earlier?
William Morris takes 10%, it’s standard across all formats and genres for the agency.
Dhavaak- if you have even a teaspoon of “active” yogurt left, it’s enough to start breeding bacteria for a new yogurt. Yeah, the boiling milk and crap is tedious. I tried to make paneer once and was disgusted by the waste of milk and my time. đ
ooh, big yucky mixed metaphor! See, that’s what happens when writers stick to cliches and easy-outs. But there could be a problem with the table– because any desi dad worth their salt would never FIX the broken table đ
if she wanted a mercedes, all she had to do was ask her parents
Kaavya’s Chewbacca defense ??
Thanks for your responses. To clarify what I meant about censoring my comment, I posted it on the Crimson’s web response feature; I didn’t submit it as a letter to the editor (they print those only occasionally, and it would obviously be too long for that). I see no justification for going through and censoring specific paragraphs of web posts, as there are no space limitations, and it is especially suspicious when they cut the parts critical of their argument and of their publication.
To Jerkus: I’d like to know what you mean by my “left-wing nuttiness.” Do you mean thinking that mass murder, torture, rape, and other atrocities are more serious than copying imagery from a teen novel is a crazy view? Regarding your other argument, certainly the alums committed their crimes after graduation (although they could have their degrees taken away), but we routinely allow people with very dark pasts to enroll as students in the graduate and professional schools, speak at University functions, donate money, and even join the faculty.
To GujuDude: Thanks for correcting Jerkus’s mistake, but it’s a shame you don’t have any arguments for dismissing my response.
To Evil Abhi: You didn’t say anything intelligent, so I really have no response to you.
dhaavak ….do you know how to make eggplant bharta without using a ton of oil.
sigh…. whats the point, eh? Eggplant bharta without the mandatory inch thick layer of oil has no reason to exist.
The phrases are in exactly the same order in both passages.
Take the probability of a specific sequence of head or tail coin tosses, say: HTTHHHHTHT It’s 0.5 to the power 10, i.e. 0.01%.
Now instead of a 1 in 2 probability of a head or tail, substitute the 1 in 10 probability of a particular word in a specific phrase (and 1 is 10 is generous– it’s more like 1 in 100).
0.1 to the power 10 yields a 0.00000001% chance that this is a coincidence.
This isn’t exact since the first is independent probability (coin toss 2 does not depend on toss 1) while the second is dependent (the preceding phrases narrow the possibilities for later phrases), but the point is, there’s no way it’s coincidence.
‘sigh…. whats the point, eh? Eggplant bharta without the mandatory inch thick layer of oil has no reason to exist.’ dakhni, like mirchi ka salan without the mirchi, right?
Manish (147#)
Incomplete Analysis.
The choice of words, structure of paragraph and thesme of work is also dependant on genre.
I guess Chick Lit as a genre severly limits the range of words to choose from.
Regards
mirchi ka salan
Or “vegetable” biryani. Is that an oxymoron?