Apr

29

Young Author Plagiarist II

April 29, 2006 | |

From NY Times article "Publisher Withdraws "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed" by Motoko Rich and Dinitia Smith,

Some of the plagiarism may have happened because she has a photographic
memory, Ms. Viswanathan said. "I remember by reading," she said. "I
never take notes." In a profile published in The New York Times earlier
this month, Ms. Viswanathan’s agent, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, said the
plot and writing of "Opal" had been "1,000 percent" Ms. Viswanathan’s.

OH REALLY? *cough cough* If Ms. Viswanathan does indeed have a photographic memory, shouldn’t she remember the author?

If it’s also 10000 percent original, how come it has a similarity in plot with Ms. McCafferty’s books?

From Harvard Crimson,

But Random House, which published both of McCafferty’s novels, said in
a statement Tuesday that Viswanathan’s explanation was “deeply
troubling and disingenuous.”

But Ms. Viswanathan does get her comeuppance as

The publisher Little, Brown agreed to withdraw all editions of her chick-lit novel, "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life," from the market.

Dreamworks, the studio that bought movie rights to her book is also withdrawing the movie deal. Sayonara Ms. Viswanathan!

I don’t know why I get such a delicious thrill on reading the author’s humiliations and suffering over this scandal. I should be a Mother Teresa and forgive this over teenage’s youth and folly and submit that it was but an innocent mistake.

Fucking not.

I am a sadist. I’m thoroughly pissed that such a naive young writer should get US$500,000 and get the 32nd spot on NY TIMES BESTSELLERS LIST  and get a movie deal on a work she stole when there are many talented experienced writers whose books are original, compelling, intelligent, suffused with wit and metaphors and ripe for interpretation that should get that advance…deserve that advance! Not some spoiled rotten overachiever whose parents could afford a college counselor. Yulch.

And it’s obvious NY TIMES is babying her. Covering up the tween. The Harvard Crimson doesn’t spare her with its article and it’s the better of the two though it’s harshly straightforward and brutal: Publisher Pulls ‘Opal Mehta’


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