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"How Opal Mehta Got" copied story - Kaavya Viswanathan

ValkyrieRaven88

ValkyrieRaven88

New Member
Have you heard about this?
This horrible girl was getting praised for being such a young, successful novelist and Harvard student, and it turns out she was a plagiarist! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaavya_Viswanathan
On this site, there is a list of things she copied nearly verbatim from another woman's book. We've talked about Dan Brown and that Frey guy, but this is much worse! Dan Brown may have had inaccurate info, and Frey may have lied about his life, but she stole direct passages from this book and said she "accidentally" copied them!
 
Isn't anyone following this? More interesting developments from the monied ranks of bigtime fiction . . . does anyone believe that amount of plagiarism of one other author could be accidental?

Anyone not up on the story, see anything related to "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed" as relates to "Sloppy Firsts" Can't say I'm surprised. The thing that got me was the big advance the Indian girl got for the next two (unwritten) books.
 
novella said:
Isn't anyone following this?
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I never heard of those novels until your post. I looked it up and found a few news stories.
http://www.thedeadbolt.com/news/042506/opalmehtaalterspages.php

I liked that it was the fans of Sloppy Firsts author that alerted her to the plagiarism. I wonder if DreamWorks will drop Viswanathan and approach McCafferty to do a movie deal?

novella said:
the big advance...for the next two (unwritten) books.
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What would be the "usual" advance, if any, for a new author?
 
yep..thts pretty pathetic. and all she says is "I have no idea wat u r talking bout." and sadly it is an Indian. thts the problem with Indians..they dont even copy well. (no offence to Indians, I myself is an Indian).
tht CANNOT be accidental!!
 
The chick got something like $2M in advance. Pedestrian writing, juvenile story, plagiarizing . . . what more could a publisher want?

Apparently she hired a 'manuscript development team' to rewrite and market the MS to publishers. Wonder if they're the ones who ripped off the other book? There's speculation in that direction.

So, this girl's first novel is cowritten by a team of marketing dweebs. How cynical is that?
 
Yes. They were discussing this story on the news yesterday. I guess the latest scoop is that the majority of the book was probably written by a ghostwriter.
 
Geez, I don't understand what happened with this thread merge. Sticking my post there without any comment from a mod looks really stupid. If someone is going to shift stuff around, would you please at least post a comment as to what went where, and why? Plus VR is the listed thread author, so it looks like I posted some dumbass comment after hers. Don't you think you could be a little more considerate of posters' intentions?
 
This article lends some good insight into the mechanisms that may have lead to the plagiarism:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/27/books/27pack.html?pagewanted=1

Interesting to note that an editor who was at Crown when Sloppy Firsts was published then worked on Opal Mehta at the book packager.

What I think is also funny is the implication that the 'teenage experience' is so universal that authors writing passages that are almost identical can be expected to happen just incidentally. That's pathetic. The writer's job is to express original experience, unique point of view, thoughtful language. Is a book that got a $500K advance now expected to be of the same quality as the average adolescent girl's essay on life, love, and lipgloss?
 
It's true that most teen lit novels are nearly identical. Personally, I didn't think the Opal Mehta thing looked too interesting...but my Dad printed off the article, probably because I'm also 17 and he was afraid the same thing would happen to me or something.
But anyway, passages shouldn't be so similar. Stories, characters, and styles looking alike, I can understand, but the passages were nearly word-for-word.
 
I wanted to know how a 19-year old could have gotten published, let alone with such a big fat paycheck.

I read in the newspaper today that the movie will still be on no matter what happens with the book. We should all be so lucky. :rolleyes:
 
Miss Shelf said:
I wanted to know how a 19-year old could have gotten published, let alone with such a big fat paycheck.

I read in the newspaper today that the movie will still be on no matter what happens with the book. We should all be so lucky. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Actually, it won't make much of a difference to her. The producers certainly bought the movie rights outright for a set price, so she won't make any more money than she got already. Which was probably a lot. Which is why they will go ahead and make it. Plus, the plagiarism really only applies to certain wording in the book, which would definitely not be anywhere in the movie.
 
Miss Shelf said:
I wanted to know how a 19-year old could have gotten published, let alone with such a big fat paycheck.

I read in the newspaper today that the movie will still be on no matter what happens with the book. We should all be so lucky. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
I don't know...I mean, I could understand if it was an amazing book, but it so isn't. From the passages I read, I can already tell I hate the characters and the plot. Sorry to anyone who's a fan, but I have a personal vendetta against "chick lit".
 
Whaddyaknow, it looks like I've gotten censored, along with at least one other poster in this thread. My first time here. I feel really proud. Though if I'd known admin was just going to delete it, I would have tried to make it a lot more objectionable in the first place... oh well.
 
I'd be interested to hear if she's still attending Harvard. Her work wasn't school-related, but the situation isn't exactly making the college look good.
 
I just read that yet more plagiarisms have been found in that book. Makes me wonder how much publicity I could get if I took one sentence from each book I've ever read and put them together in one book. :cool: I'm sure I've "internalized" more than one book. :rolleyes:
 
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