Category Archives: Literature

KaavyaGate reloaded

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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.”

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One Night @ Bad Fiction Hell

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You may have heard of One Night @ the Call Center, an Indian novel attempting to ride the call center trend. It’s sold multitudinous copies and is being made into a movie. The script will be penned by the same author, an i-banker whose author’s voice brags about not being a writer.

He’s right. The story has an interesting premise, but it’s one of the worst-written books I’ve ever read, falling somewhere between bad high school love poem and sixth-grade book report. You’ll laugh out loud. The hilarity will be entirely unintentional.

The best review of a book this bad is to quote from it liberally. Enjoy the stank. Spoilers below.

~~~

The author writes groaners rivaling the one from Notting Hill:

‘Deep inside, I am just a girl who wants to be with her favorite boy. Because like you, this girl is a person who needs a lot of love.’

There are even more lines straight out of a Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest:

‘It is time to face the real world, even if it is harder and painful. I’d rather fly and crash, than just snuggle and sleep…’

‘Do you have a dark side, Shyam?’ … ‘I have so many–like half a dozen dark sides. I am like dark-sided hexagon [sic].’

Then he pats himself on back for minor-league wordplay:

‘Sorry, but calling is not my calling,’ Vroom said. I thought his last line was quite clever, but it wasn’t the right time to appreciate verbal tricks.

Telling, not showing — the author can’t write action, so he grasps at a voiceover:

‘We’re hanging above a hole, supported only by toothpicks. We’re screwed,’ Radhika said, summing up the situation for all of us.

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How Kaavya Viswanathan got rich, got caught, and got ruined

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Many of you have already picked up on the story broken by the Harvard Crimson on Sunday. It appears VERY likely that young author Kaavya Viswanathan is a cheat. Her newly released novel, part of a lucrative two-book deal, has several passages that are almost identical to a 2001 novel that examined similar adolescent themes:

A recently-published novel by Harvard undergraduate Kaavya Viswanathan ’08, “How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life,” contains several passages that are strikingly similar to two books by Megan F. McCafferty–the 2001 novel “Sloppy Firsts” and the 2003 novel “Second Helpings.”

At one point, “Opal Mehta” contains a 14-word passage that appears verbatim in McCafferty’s book “Sloppy Firsts.”

Reached on her cell phone Saturday night, Viswanathan said, “No comment. I have no idea what you are talking about.”

McCafferty, the author of three novels and a former editor at the magazine Cosmopolitan, wrote in an e-mail to The Crimson Saturday night: “I’m already aware of this situation, and so is my publisher…” [Link]

Normally I would be skeptical until I heard more about this, but the Crimson has just broken it down to the point where you know how this is all going to end. Her literary career is over. If I were her I would think about falling back on medical school or something real quick. I was thrilled to see a teenage girl that could still write and didn’t use “u” instead of “you,” or “r” instead of “are.” My hopes for the next generation are now completely dashed. Here are just two of the numerous examples of apparent plagiarism cited by the Crimson:

From page 217 of McCafferty’s first novel: “But then he tapped me on the shoulder, and said something so random that I was afraid he was back on the junk.”

From page 142 of Viswanathan’s novel: “…he tapped me on the shoulder and said something so random I worried that he needed more expert counseling than I could provide…”

From page 237 of McCafferty’s first novel: “Finally, four major department stores and 170 specialty shops later, we were done.”

From page 51 of Viswanathan’s novel: “Five department stores, and 170 specialty shops later, I was sick of listening to her hum along to Alicia Keys……” [Link]

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The Barmaid’s Tale

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Every once in awhile, introducing a writer demands that you not pen something funny, embarrassing or insightful, that you get out of the way and simply quote the fabulosity. This is one of those times: rollin’ down D.C., sippin’ on Love and Haterade.

On the relationship between eyefucking and classical dance:

… fifteen years of Indian dance classes have made me ridiculously good at eyefuckingFifteen years of Indian dance classes have made me ridiculously good at eyefucking. Like, I think I’m better at eyefucking than some people are in bed. [Link]

On Indian parents and parallel parking:

Lester and Sally [parents] never taught either of us how to parallel park with actual cars… We often wonder what that might have looked like to unsuspecting suburban passerby… Two orange cones in an empty parking lot, a middle-aged balding Indian man explaining the art of parallel parking with charts and math and interpretive dance, and a disgruntled hyphenated-American teenager standing by the sidelines watching the scene unfold with amusement and shame, longing for the day she would have a license to drive away from it all. [Link]

On the masonry cock-block:

The building had unbelievable restrictions about overnight guests… they were truly outrageous: forms needed to be filled out at least 24 hours in advanced, signed by all your suite-mates, then approved by the building… I almost felt bad for the kids because it made an outside random hookup absolutely impossible… the building itself was perhaps the greatest cock block of all time…

Katrina (whose hair, if I haven’t mentioned it, was totally JBF): Well, it’s just that…

[The author]: Katrina? Unless he’s dying and sleeping with you was the antidote to that death, I assure you — he’s ok… I promise you, Katrina, in my 26 years on this earth, I’ve never seen anyone die as a result of unfulfilled desire.

And with that, Katrina fled the building and followed her Michael Fink into the dark night. [Link]

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The narcissist principle

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I recently checked out How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life at Crossword, a Barnes & Noble-like Indian chain with Barista-style upstairs cafés. The book is chick lit for teens, and the Indian cover interprets that so literally it shows a girl carrying both strappy heels and a stack of textbooks.

UK/India cover

The cover model for the UK/India edition could be desi, but her look is more toward the white end of the spectrum. Nor is Opal a common desi name. If I recall correctly (and I may be wrong — will double-check), there’s no mention of Mehta’s desi origins on the cover or in the official blurb (though the blurb for industry buyers is more accurate). Her desi-ness has been excised as neatly as was the turbaned actor from the Life Aquatic poster. To a casual browser it would almost certainly seem that Opal Mehta was just another white character, albeit with a funny last name.

I’m of two minds about this. In one sense it’s wonderful and somewhat subversive to have a desi character where her ethnicity isn’t made an issue. But in this story, surely Mehta’s upper-middle-class, post-’65 desi American-ness is a key reason why her parents are obsessive about her academic life. The plot summary reads like a parody of Asian American parental pushiness. That she’s desi seems integral to the plot.

Not that this is the author’s fault. New authors have famously little say over the trade dress of the product, though later Rushdie books have conspicuously avoided sari covers. (One of the worst: a hardcover of former BBC India correspondent Mark Tully’s book The Heart of India; it has that overbroad title, a garish, hot pink cover, a woman in a sari and a border smothered in garlands.)

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The spices speak to me

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Director Paul Mayeda Berges was quoted in DNA today about his new movie The Mistress of Spices:

The other key element was to… give each spice its own Indian instrument so you could know when they were calling out to Tilo. The chillies warn her with a tabla. Chandan, kala jeera, tulsi, hing and cinnamon each have their own sounds.

I’ll bet that what the spices are telling Tilo is, ‘Stop exoticizing us, wench!’ Spice-tabla-Chocolat-sex: Tilo Does Oakland

Related posts: Juicier matters, Coffee cant, We’ve got a live one!, Sakina’s Restaurant, Anatomy of a genre, M-m-me so hungry, Buzzword bingo

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Nabokov Ninnington

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With apologies to The Namesake

2006

On a wet August monsoon evening two weeks before her due date, Jennifer Ninnington stands in the kitchen of a Pali Hill apartment, combining Bournvita and Horlicks and crumbled chocolate in a bowl. She adds sugar, flour, egg whites, wishing there were yeast to pour into the mix. Jennifer has been consuming this concoction throughout her pregnancy, a humble approximation of the brownies sold for two bucks in New York cafés and at large train stations throughout America, spilling from saran wrap. She wipes sweat from her face with the free end of her denim shirt. Her swollen feet ache against speckled white marble. She reaches for another chocolate bar, frowning again as she pulls at its crisp gold wrapper. A curious warmth floods her abdomen, followed by a tightening so severe she doubles over, gasping without sound, dropping the chocolate bar with a thud on the floor.

She calls out to her husband, Andy, an MBA candidate at IIM-Bombay, who is studying in the bedroom. He leans over a card table; the edge of their bed, a queen mattress under a pastel blue pinstriped twill spread, serves as his chair. Continue reading →

Cyberpunk Bollywood

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Sci-fi novelist Bruce Sterling, a pioneer in the cyberpunk genre, is also a huge Bollyfan who designed this bumper sticker (via Boing Boing):

That’s Parineeta on the right, not sure about the one on the left. The guy’s got taste.

He’s also been blogging the ins and outs of various sex-lies-and-mirrordiscs scandals (Sanjay Joshi, Amar Singh) working their way through political parties and the Indian Parliament:

Sanjay Joshi was set up. Somebody videoed him inflagrante diplimatico with a schoolteacher — bad news if your job in a conservative religious party depends on a vow of celibacy. Days later, flamboyant socialist playboy Amar Singh, of the liberal Samajwadi Party, announced his phone had been tapped. A salacious CD of purported chats with Tolly- and Bolly-wood starlets soon began making the rounds (hey, he’s a flamboyant socialist playboy).

In quick succession, more than half a dozen prominent ministers and pols stepped forward with claims that they too had been filmed, shadowed and bugged. More than a few signs point to a dirty tricks arm of the ruling Congress Party, with rumblings of deep-pocketed corporate backing. A crew of snoops for hire, black-hat script kiddies and renegade telco underlings has been rounded up and are under the screws. Meanwhile, the Sanjay sex tape is the hottest DVD bootleg on the market, and rumors of many more discs compromising many more pols abound… [Link]

His blog posts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21

Related post: One ticket for the clue train, please

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The Guardians of the British Raj

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Stalin found it “ridiculous” that “a few hundred Englishmen should dominate India.” [Link]

A new book by historian David Gilmour, The Ruling Caste: Imperial Lives in the Victorian Raj (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2006), “helps explain how [the British civil servants in India] pulled it off.”

In yesterday’s Washington Post, noted author and UN official Shashi Tharoor gave a generally favorable review of The Ruling Caste. In Tharoor’s view,

The Ruling Caste paints an arresting and richly detailed portrait of how the British ruled 19th-century India — with unshakeable self-confidence buttressed by protocol, alcohol and a lot of gall…. [For example,] one 24-year-old district officer found himself in charge of 4,000 square miles and a million people [Link]

The arrogance of the British administrators and the paternalistic means by which they viewed their Indian subjects is upsetting, though not unsurprising. One viceroy is quoted by Gilmour as saying:

“We are all British gentlemen engaged in the magnificent work of governing an inferior race.”

According to Gilmour:

Few shared Queen Victoria’s “romantic feelings for ‘brown skins….'” Well into the 20th century, they spoke and wrote of the need to treat Indians as “children” incapable of ruling themselves.

Despite Gilmour’s insights into the personal lives and thoughts of these administrators, Tharoor is critical of the book’s failure to examine the Indian response to the British public officials, who were “members of the Indian Civil Service (ICS)”:

What is missing, though, is any sense of an Indian perspective on these men and their work. What did the subjects of their administration think of them? Gilmour does not tell us. He glosses over the prejudice and casual racism of many ICS men.

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Coffee cant

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How many times have you seen a desi profile begin with a sexualized coffee metaphor?

Amir Khan, Starbucks menu item

[Boxer] Amir Khan is a slender 19-year-old with smooth skin the color of café con leche. [Link]

That particular style was original before Starbucks was big, when light-skinned black girls calling themselves ‘Mocha’ showed up on prime time to tease the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Only thing is, everyone now knows that coffee beans are actually harvested by poorly-paid brown people. Awkward.

Personally, I say we bring the brewless fuck back in style. It’s so darn cute, so dang-diggly underused, that the NYT should apply it to everyone they profile. And the metaphor should evaluate whether the subject is bangable, through coffeerotica.

‘Oscar de la Hoya is a 33-year-old with skin the color of espresso.

‘Avril Lavigne is a 21-year-old with skin the color of a double tall, no-whip vanilla latte.

‘Alan Greenspan is an 80-year-old with skin the color of curdled whipping cream.’

Hey, if you’re good, kick it up a notch into cocoarotica: milk chocolate, caramel, dark chocolate with almond bits. Make the paper of record sound as subtle as hip-hop lyrics. Bam, now we’re cookin’ with gas.

Related posts: We’ve got a live one!, Sakina’s Restaurant, Anatomy of a genre, M-m-me so hungry, Buzzword bingo

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