Haven't I Heard This All Before?

The storm surrounding Kaavya Viswanathan's book "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life" seems to have died down a bit from a week ago. For those not familiar with the situation, Ms. Viswanathan is a teenage author who is currently attending Harvard University. At the age of 17 she was signed to a $500,000 two-book deal which made her the talk of the campus. Unfortunately, shortly after the first book was published, rumors and eventually evidence came to light that the book in question contained passages very similar in style and tone to an earlier book, "Sloppy Firsts" by Megan McCafferty. Although the later beook is not a direct lift of the earlier work, there are enough similarities that the publishers immediately withdrew the book from the shelves, the contract was torn to shreds and Ms. Viswanathan (and Harvard's) reputation has been somewhat tarnished.

Is all the hoopla surrounding this case justified? To a degree... yes. In school and college they always teach you to cite your sources or list your references. I realize that for a research paper or a thesis it's different than when you're writing a book or a novel. Still, if not the author themselves, it is the responsiblity of the publishers to make sure that there aren't similarities or direct quotes from a book. It is difficult to catch such things and regardless of what others may say, I don't believe that Ms. Viswanathan's actions were intentional. When one is inspired by works of another author, one tends to use their style in an effort to be like that author. And sometimes when one is so familiar or inspired by a work, it becomes such a part of your consciousness that when we start writing, the thoughts seem more like our own than of the work that inspired it.

In this case, Ms. Viswanathan did come forward and admit that her work was similar and partially quoted from Ms. McCafferty's work. Now that the whole situation is out there, and now that the books have been pulled from the shelves, and the contract Ms. Viswanathan had has been completely rendered moot, one must wonder if there is any point in bringing a lawsuit against her. Had she made money off of the sales, it would have made sense but in this case she made no profit off the work other than what she had stipulated in her book contract.

I mean if we are going to go after authors for such actions then there are so many others who need to be put on the spot. Authors such as Dave Brown of "The DaVinci Code" fame and Stephen Ambrose, author of numerous historical books were both accused of lifting their book ideas from other authors. Dave Brown was recently exonerated in his case; whereas in Stephen Ambrose's case, the judge found that there was sufficient evidence to prove that the author had lifted passages from another source without properly citing it. Now if prominent authors can be accused of this, and can further be found guilty of committing these acts, then is it really fair to ostracize a teenager? To say that this student has blemished the name of Harvard University is a falsehood. I cannot believe that there are no other cases currently pending in the campus's Academic Integrity review council. I suppose there are, but just not of such national prominence.

Lessons learned under the scrutiny of the media and the public are often the most lasting ones. Hopefully Ms. Viswanathan will not be disuaded from continuing her enjoyment of writing. I'm sure that in the future she will read and re-read all her works to ensure that this sort of thing never happens again.