I was wondering if the Viswanathan/McCafferty plagiarism scandal would dissipate or turn red and boil over, and with the help of the ever-crimson Harvard publications, it seems this is quite a gossip fest. I remember back during the Dailey/Roberts plagiarism case, one of the headlines read “Ever wonder why romance novels all sound the same?” Well, the article continued, it’s because they are the same – since one author allegedly (do I have to say “allegedly” or was it proven in court?) lifted pages from the other for her own publications. They were, in fact, largely identical. Hardy har har!
Oh, so funny. Not. I remember the media at the time largely made fun of the case, because it’s romance novels, people, who really gives a crap? (ME, says SB Sarah.)
So I’ve been kind of bemused at the plagiarism case facing Kaavya Viswanathan, who, collaborating with 17th Street Productions, wrote, or “wrote” How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life, a teen novel recently optioned for movie production. Seems the venerable NY Times found over 29 sections that were “strikingly similar” to Megan McCafferty’s Sloppy Firsts
(Pssst: here’s a hint. If you’re going to copy someone, try something published a liiiittle farther back in time.)
Further, according to the Times, some passages are taken verbatim. Of course, the Times’ article is a little soft and cuddly; comparatively, Viswanathan gets a major red-faced bitchslap from the Harvard Crimson, which must be a lot of fun for her since she’s a sophomore there. They’ve also published a side-by-side comparison of the allegedly plagiarised passages.
Publishers for both sides are scrambling to figure out what to do next, but her publisher has shocked me to my big comfy shoes by reporting that they will reissue the book with an acknowledgement to McCafferty. To quote the Washington State Herald, which is outraged by the potential of profit from their plagiarism, “What could the acknowledgement possibly say? ‘You might want to read “Sloppy Firsts” first’?”
Many reports are examining the contractual obligations to the author, the publisher’s duties and the rights of the author to material, and what constitutes plagiarism and copyright infringement, two different legal matters:
“Plagiarism is passing off one’s work as your own, but that doesn’t necessarily make it copyright infringement,†Justin Hughes, the director of the intellectual property law program at Yeshiva University’s Cardozo School of Law, said. “In an infringement action, a person can use a ‘fair use’ defense. That is, that they didn’t use so many words as to be guilty of infringement.â€
As the Hindustan Times reports, sales for all three novels have gone up up up on Amazon’s sales tracker, and as of today Opal was #87 in their sales rank and was #81 yesterday.
Definitions and legal consequences aside, personally I’m very curious about the role 17th Street Productions might have played in all this. In several articles, Viswanathan is revealed to have no ambitions to be an author as her career (which at this point is probably a good thing). I know from some coverage of The Gossip Girl series, also 17th Street Production novels, that the production company calls itself a “multimedia packaging company” that moves beyond mere book publishing. They market several series, mostly YA, bringing in a writer after they’ve come up with a concept, a potential plotline, and key points to include in the book. It’s like a publishing offshoot of trend marketing: spot what’s hot, cobble together several key elements that should sell, find a writer to hook it all together, and do so as quickly as possible. As one source, former Sweet Valley High writer Lizzie Skurnick, quoted at Media Bistro’s Galley Cat puts it, ”[packagers] serve as writer and editor of a book” and make that pesky book publishing process easy for the publishing house. Ka. Ching. So how hard would it be for a young writer, suddenly handed a contract and a map to follow while writing her book, to draw upon previously published sources? And would there possibly, maybe, be pressure to do so just to get the damn book out already?
I wonder.
Ron and Sarah at MediaBistro’s Galley Cat have been digging through the media investigations into 17th Street’s modus operandi, and have come up with some fascinating bits of information. The Harvard Independent has found some evidence of prior plagiarism coming out of 17th Street, and more than one writer has also raised the possibility that 17th Street will take some blame.
In my humble opinion, the whole mess points to a few sad truths: the state of publishing in this country is a crapful profit-driven enterprise controlled by a very few, and while it’s always true that good writers go unpublished while bad ones get multiple book deals, what does it say about the future of the author that the development and creative process of coming up with a book, and the roadmap to writing it are the product of the editor and publisher, and the author is a necessary small cog, the person who hammers out a few thousand words to string all their creative work together? Obviously, I am not naive enough to pretend that creativity is more important than profit, but is it really surprising that a very young woman, contracted for an absolute assload of money to write a book, might easily take the short way out?
I’m not excusing her plagiarism, or anyone’s for that matter, because it’s a downright shitful thing to do, but the fact remains, not much will change because of this case. The humiliation of all this spectacle is the most damaging punishment Viswanathan’s likely to get, and 17th Street will probably continue to mine through the trends and will farm out that pesky writing to authors who are willing to take a minor share of the total profit of their labor. It’s awful to have to confront what publishing is becoming – or perhaps has already become – but am I surprised that this is happening again? That someone cheated to get the job done and the check cashed faster to move on to the next novel? Not hardly. Business is business. It pays to cheat.
Now, were Candy and I queens of the known universe, in the Smart Bitch Court of Publishing Justice, she’d lose her advance, or be forced to give it to a literacy charity, and all profits of that book would become McCafferty’s, including the share belonging to 17th Street Productions.
But since there is little that can be done in a criminal sense, McCafferty and her publisher will have to take the pains to sue the shit out of all involved, placing the burden of proof, made slightly lighter by Harvard’s dogged reporting of the scandal, on the victim, and it won’t slow 17th Street down at all. Pre teens who probably shouldn’t read the material in the first place will still buy The Gossip Girl series, as well as The A-List series. The saddest part of the whole scandal is that the scandal itself may be the only satisfaction McCafferty will get, because nothing will change.
I know this is not a particularly popular position, but I think that publishers of popular fiction are sending out boatloads of mixed messages as to what constitutes publishable and “original” material by their standards. Although I personally have always had a very strict standard of plagiarism for myself and my students, and even though if I were McCafferty I would feel plagiarized, I think duplication is not only tolerated but encouraged in many aspects of fiction writing (and this goes double for film, IMO). If it’s plagiarism to pass off another author’s ideas as one’s own, how far does that extend when we’re talking about characterization, plotting, tone, conflict, narrative voice, setting, etc.; you know, all the stuff we charge Romance with shamlessly copying over and over and over? Further, how much of what’s called or charged as plagiarism after the fact is done so on an ad hoc basis—that is, author A calls in a charge and then publisher B responds, moving everyone to draw a definitional line that they will then continue to violate until another alleged case comes up. I wish this whole case would serve as a catalyst to setting some general standards for plagiarism in fiction that serve authors rather than publishers. Because now I feel that publishers are talking out of both sides of their mouths.
Oh, I’ve heard there are over 40 copied passages.
This is so not okay.
BTW, Janet Daily was taken to court, and found guilty, but I think she got away with only having to pay damages to Roberts. Daily tried to hide behind a “depression and pressure made me do it” defence, in the same way Kaavya is hiding behind an “influence” defence.
But what really gets me is that Daily is writing again. Talk about letting the alcoholic wade right up to the open bar.
I’m somewhat confused on the issue of plagiarism vs. copyright infringement, so here’s an opportunity for all the lawyers/law students in this here joint to sk00l me on the difference. At any rate, from my point of view, it seems that plagiarism should be a subset of copyright infringement. Yes? No? Or does copyright infringement stem from some sort of substantial appropriation, whereas the problem with plagiarism lies with lack of attribution?
And since we’re talking about copyright infringement, anyone been following the Lori Jareo debacle involving her trying to sell her Star Wars fanfic on Amazon.com and Barnsandnoble.com? Teresa Nielsen Hayden followed that up with a magnificently articulated comment about fanfic.
Nice one, Sarah. Something that struck me about this as I was reading your post & some of the articles in the Crimson was how patronizing the publisher and 17th St. are about genre fiction and its readers. The publisher says they’ll remove the offending passages and acknowledge McCafferty. 17th St. came up with a template and plot points and found an author whose background would help them create the right sort of buzz. If they keep the film deal, Mehta could end up more well-known than McCafferty, and the noteriety doesn’t seem to be harming sales.
The implication is that if there’s enough publicity and the marketing is clever, people will buy any book as long as it’s not a steaming pile of crap that actually tries to offend them. It suggests a belief that marketing produces more predictable results than taking a risk on good-quality, original writing. Which is just depressing because this sort of arrogant attitude is probably what allows people to believe that they’re too smart to get caught, whoever did the actual copying.
The more I read about this, the weirder it gets. At first, I was siding with the author because I know it is far too easy to unconsciously imitate the writing style of someone you admire.
Then I heard about the $500K advance given a college sophomore with an unfinished novel. I heard about the book packager, and it began to sound more like a work-for-hire operation, similar to that used by different franchises like “Sweet Valley High”. And now I’m even more flabbergasted.
This story just gets stranger and stranger…
P.S. Ideas are not subject to copyright. Words and phrasing are.
Simple.
The problem is morals. If I wanted to rip off the plot of a Nora Robers novel, I could do it. It might not make me popular, but it’s perfectly legal. Plotlines are not subject to copyright. They’re ideas. But I wouldn’t do it because I have morals. That’s her story. I would find a way to tell something similar, but original.
Ideas are not subject to copyright. Words and phrasing are.
Right. And that’s why the “plagiarism != copyright infringement” bit confuses me. Because plagiarism involves lifting passages more-or-less verbatim and claiming they’re your own, right?
I’m also wondering how many people confuse trademark infringement with copyright infringement, especially when it comes to debating fanfic?
SO CONFUSED.
The whole issue regarding hype selling more books than actual, y’know, quality writing, is depressing indeed. But hey, if it works for cars, beer and movies, why not books? *cries*
Oh My Fucking Dog . . . I just don’t even know where to begin with this one. Somehow a cart, a horse, a whip and a long humiliating parade through Midtown seem to be called for. Followed IMMEDIATELY by that $500K being handed over the McCafferty, along with whatever $ goes with the movie deal. Not to mention a cease and desist on the publication of this steaming pile of shit.
This is what comes of the fact that high school students the world over are getting away with plagiarizing their reports (if I remember correctly the last time I heard about someone using a program to catch this something like 40% of the papers tested came out as positive for plagiarism; wish I could find that article) and there seems to be little or no punishment for doing so. Why would this girl have thought a book would be any different? Harvard (with their high standards for student conduct) isn’t even talking about expelling the little thief.
Sadly, I have every faith that somewhere, even as I type, lawyers are furiously working to find a way to justify this whole mess . . .
And that’s why the “plagiarism != copyright infringement†bit confuses me.
Okay. Here’s a link that might help: http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/scc/tutorial/plagiarism/versus.html
Basically, if I copy a novel to my website, and include links to the book’s listing on Amazon, the author’s blog, and whatever else, that’s copyright infringement, even if I put the author’s name all over it. You’ve heard that Google is posting whole books? That’s copyright infringement(CI). Basically CI occurs anytime someone posts pieces of copyrighted work for their own personal gain. (Distribution for education is often exempt from CI because it’s for the student’s gain. Go figure.)
This gets even more confusing when you lump in “fair use”.
Most people don’t go after short passages that are attributed properly. It’s like trespassing. Am I trespassing when I walk across my neighbour’s lawn without permission? Yes. Is he going to go after me for it? No. I sure as hell hope not. It would be a complete waste of time. But he could, so I stay off his lawn.
(I am not a lawyer.)
Here’s the little I know about plagiarism and copyright infringement:
Plagiarism has no legal standing as a term, but I can tell you that ideas are often seen as incorproated into definitions of plagiarism as they operate functionally. I don’t know near enough about Intellectual Property Law to understand how this all works out legally.
Copyright infringement can occur with or without plagiarism (and vice versa). Copyright infringement is often accomplshed through the violation of fair use doctrine, although because that area of federal copyright law is so murky, it’s a big problem all the way around. You can plagiarize an uncopyrighted work and you can infringe on a copyrighted work without plagiarizing, although the two often go hand in hand. In this case, I would imagine that McCafferty’s publisher would have a copyright infringement claim, and Viswanathan’s a breach of contract claim.
As for fan fic, isn’t that a potential combination of copyright and trademark infringement?
This isn’t new. They do this in Hollywood all the time. If something works, the execs want more of it. So the best pitch you can make would start with something like, “Don’t worry. This isn’t anything you haven’t seen before.”
It’s very risky to go with an untried formula, so they’ll seek something LIKE this story or LIKE that one. And there are just enough lazy and desperate writers out there ready to sell out to appease them. There is nothing legally wrong in repackaging an old story; people do it all the time. Star Wars. Disney’s Cinderella, Snow White, and the rest. Various teen movies based on Shakespearean plays. But it stinks of unoriginality, and that’s all it is, really.
As for those passages. They’re proof that the writer was even lazier than most in the same position. She saved herself from committing copyright infringement by rephrasing many of the lines, but the still rather obvious similarities are evidence that it may have been INTENTIONAL copying of ideas and words, or plagiarism.
That said, it is still very easy to copy someone’s work UNintentionally. I know of a non-fiction column writer whose passages were compared to another’s, but in his case, it was because as he did his research and took notes for his article, he didn’t rewrite the facts he read as he noted them. And later, as he gathered all his notes, he assumed that some of them were of his writing and phrasing and not written verbatim from his research.
Ack. The whole CI/Plagiarism arguement is too much for my numbers-oriented brain to handle right now. I really need to sit down with it and think about it.
However, from 10,000 feet up I want to know who told Viswanathan to get crackin’ on the passage plagiarising, and how she could morally excuse herself from what she was doing.
Sure, there are plenty of books out there with similar story lines (especially in Romancelandia), but the storyteller is what makes the book special. Viswanathan simply proved that her lack of confidence in her own abilities has cut her off at the knees.
Ahhh, OK, thanks to those of you who provided additional information for the clarification—I overlooked the fact that distribution rights is covered by copyright, among other things, whereas plagiarism seems largely a problem with attribution. I didn’t know it had no legal standing. Eeeeenteresting.
Did anyone else think that the Viswanathan versions of the plagiarized passages are poorly written? I’m trying to decide if my editorial-judgement glasses are tinted by my contempt for the notion of lifting passages from another’s book, but McCafferty seems a more concise, less self-indulgent writer.
As to the effect on the publishing industry as a whole and 17th Street in particular:
If McCaffrey’s publisher starts aiming lawyers at Viswanathan’s publisher, it will be a good thing, leading to more caution on the part of publishers when dealing with packagers in general, and with 17th Street in particular.
Honestly, I can’t see where this is a bad thing for writers. The reading public reacted very poorly to the James Frey thing (did it sell more books? Yes. Did it make people less trusting of autobiographies? Yes. Will it make them less likely to buy autobiographies in the future? …Likely).
Regardless of the number of trashy popular books that sell like hotcakes, the general wisdom in publishing is that we want to attract the readers who buy more than one book a year. Repeat customers are the lifeblood of any industry.
When a book gets hot publicity for bad reasons, it will sell more books because non-readers will buy a copy to see what all the fuss is about. But real readers are pickier than that, and will regard with suspicion future offerings that have similar taint.
Did anyone else think that the Viswanathan versions of the plagiarized passages are poorly written?
Yes, but you really should give her a break. It’s much harder to rewrite someone else’s book well than it is to just write the book in the first place. Look. She had to change names, rearrange some stuff . . . and sometimes even add a sentence or two of her own.
When I read the PW review of Opal Mehta, I thought, “Oh, this sounds like fun.” Hadn’t gotten around to requesting it from the library, though, so hadn’t read it.
I suppose it’s not really a coincidence, then, that I enjoyed the McCafferty novels (and was looking forward to reading the third installment in the series).
Haha. I used to be so jealous of this girl and her big fat advance and she’s published at 19 and blah blah. I used to say, “What does she have that I don’t? Why is she better than me?”
Now? Not so much. Instead I am just cackling with evil delight. She is apparently not very bright at all. Or scrupulous, for that matter.
And the answers to the above questions are, apparently, people who will write the book for her and oh yeah. She’s not.
So yeah, I have no sympathy for her whatosever. Zip.
My two cents:
I’ve read both McCafferty’s books and Viswanathan’s book. I picked up a copy of Opal Mehta at the library on Tuesday, after the news broke. I wouldn’t have gone out of my way to find and read a copy, but there it was, standing face out on a display case by the self-check-out, so I took a copy.
Outside of the specific language duplication, pieces of the book seemed very similar to McCafferty’s books: the sort of hero was reminiscent of Marcus; the fashion conscious friends were like two of McCafferty’s characters; even the attempted interlude with Student Council Boy was similar. I’m not saying that those characters were an act of plagiarism or copyright infringement, because they are probably stock characters and plot points in any teen chick lit.
Beyond the similarities, I found Opal Mehta to be, well, kind of ~meh~. It wasn’t awful in comparison to some of the teen chick lit that is published, but it wasn’t outstanding, either. The characters were one dimensional caricatures and the language was awkward. Opal lacked the charm and self-awareness of McCafferty’s Jessica Darling or of Carolyn Mackler’s Mara Valentine.
I’ve been following this story all week and am of two minds about it. The similarites between Kaavya’s and McCafferty’s writings are too close for comfort-Kaavya’s lines read like a book report where you know the kid didn’t even read the assignment and just reworded the copy off the book jacket or Cliff Notes.
Also,Kaavya went from saying”I don’t know what you’re talking about” one day and the next”Oh,I never,ever ment to hurt her(McCafferty)” and this “unconcious” copying,I don’t buy. I’ve been a reader all my life and unless this girl has some strange X Men power to absorb everything she’s ever read and rewrite it to suit her needs,this is baloney worthy of Oscar Meyer.
That being said,I’m also not ready to light the torches and pass out pitchforks to the mob just yet. Kaavya should be held responsible and make a sincere amends,not just go on press junkets with an “I’m sorry” song. With all this stuff about Alloy and the fact that the same editor who worked on Opal Mehta also did worked on McCafferty’s books,too,I really feel that this whole mess should’ve been nipped in the bud before the book even got to the galley stage.
Unless someone out there in publishing land thinks so little of their target audience that they figured”All those books are the same,anyway! This one’s a little bit fancier,with a Harvard girl and stuff.”
One way to think of the difference between plagiarism and copyright infringement is to look at the term itself, “copyright.” The holder of the copyright has the sole right to copy or arrange for physical copying of the work. The copyright can be transferred or retained within a contractual or licensing arrangement such as a publishing contract.
One issue that is always at the forefront of any copyright infringement question is “harm” to the holder of the copyright. The owner of the copyright has the right to profit from it, and uses which infringe on this right to profit from the work will be assessed for the amount of damage they do to the owner’s potential for future profit (this is one question at the heart of the whole Google thing).
So in the Daily/Roberts case, harm was pretty clear cut, because the infringement was in books that compete for sales in the same genre. Outside of simple plagiarism, there is “harm” to the author who created the work but did not profit from the sales of it, at least on a theoretical basis. IE, Roberts created work, which Dailey then profited from, theoretically denying Roberts her due profit. This is always an arguable point, and I’ll bet it will be argued in this case too if it goes to court.
The other thing about copyright infringement, which is a part of the fair use question, is HOW MUCH of the work was copied versus the nature of the work. It’s an old wives’ tale that you can “legally” copy one paragraph, or four, or whatever. It all depends on the nature of the work. As they say, copying one line of a haiku may well be infringement, while copying one line of a novel in all likelihood isn’t. Every single case of copyright infringement is different because of this aspect of the law.
Also, the FACT of copying is another question. I can sit down at my computer and type a sentence at the same time as someone else is typing precisely the same sentence, and there is no infringement. We are creating work without reference to one another, and it is pure coincidence that we came up with the same sentence. Obviously this is tricky to prove, but it’s one reason that many authors, including myself, are wary of accepting manuscripts to read. If it can be shown that someone had access to a work, and then they subsequently infringed on it, it’s very hard to convince anyone that they did it unintentionally.
Whereas if I could prove that I had never seen or heard of this other person at the time I wrote my sentence, then they will have a harder time proving I infringed on their work.
If someone has clearly had access to the work, then conscious intention to infringe or not because much much much harder to prove.
I’ve only read the NYT article so I only saw the one comparison. If I were a judge, I’d be suspicous, I must say. The fact that unusual grammatical structure (the listing “a” “b”, etc) is used isn’t so much a problem in itself, but that in combination with the similarity in word choice—selection of synonyms for the original words—and that this structure and similar word choice goes on for several paragraphs…that looks pretty bad to me.
This isn’t to say that unconsious plagiarism doesn’t happen. It does. I think it has to—we all learn to write from reading other’s work. But that kind of “plagiarism” occurs in dibs and dabs, not in paragraphs and pages.
Whenever a line comes too easily to me, or sounds familiar, it kicks me into obsessively going back through my books to see where I’ve written it before. Usually I can’t find it, or can only find something similar. Then years later I might come across two lines in two books of my own that are almost exactly the same—and they never rang any bells with me when I wrote either one.
Well, sorry, I’m a copyright geek, as you know.
Now they are trying to say Kaavya did not really make $500,000. As if making less money by cheating somehow makes it all better.
By the way – Dailey had been a professional writer for years when she did the whole copying thing. She was caught and paid for it. I am more willing to excuse her than Kaavya. The whole “I will rewrite the parts I got caught cheating on and put a nice note to the person I stole from in the front of the book” is so not cutting it with me.
Is it awful of me to say that I really liked the book? I thought the premise was great, and I’ve never read any of the McCafferty books to know any differently. So I’m disappointed to hear this.
(Btw, the publisher is yanking the book entirely now.)
But even I must admit that I finished it thinking, “How on EARTH did a teenager write something this good?! HOW?!” Course, now I do know: not only was plagiarism involved, tons of adult packaging and management was. Ugh.
I am surprised that a company who produces series of books by authors that everyone knows aren’t really the “authors” of that series (anyone else ever think “Cecily von Ziez-whatever” sounded totally fake?) would want to produce a lone book by a kid, though. Opal wasn’t really a book that would have made a good series moneymaker, nor was KV exactly a good figurehead for more than a one-off.
There was a student editorial in the Harvard Crimson which argued that Harvard students are so jealous and competitive with each other, that they feel “disgust” when one in their ranks succeeds as Viswanathan did with her contract. It is no surprise, then, that the student newspaper has made such a strong case against her, virtually ignoring the Alloy Entertainment angle.
And me, I think that angle is where lots of the action is. Heck, Alloy SHARES THE COPYRIGHT ON THIS BOOK! Supposedly Viswanathan was referred to them by her agent, and they claim they only consulted with her on the concept. But they share copyright, which, as we know, is no small thing, and therefore up to half of the advance and some of the royalties. They’re a packaging firm. Could it be; might it be; may it be that Alloy could have done more than consult?
As someone else pointed out, Viswanathan’s book is not soooooo different from McCafferty’s beyond even the disputed passages. Why would a young woman who was incredibly accomplished BEFORE she went to Harvard be so stupid and reckless as to plagiarize baldly from a book by an author whose voice is so distinctive, whose new book is being published concurrently, and who already seems to have served as an inspiration on other levels? The truth is that Viswanathan may be completely guilty—intentionally and consciously so. But since plagiarism is a very serious claim against a person’s reputation, I’m waiting a little while before I tighten the noose on her.
What I really hope is that if a wealthy and powerful firm like Alloy does have something to hide, they don’t successfully exploit or scapegoat Viswanathan to do it.
The one thing that struck me the most about the “similiar” passages were that weren’t exact. The change of a word here, twisting the sentence there smacked of a college term paper where we all so carefully made certain we changed just enough to not be “copying” from the original work.
It always made me nervous. I was a compulsive footnoter. 😉
Note that it wasn’t a lawyer, agent or publisher, but a reader who first noticed the similarities and notified McCaffrey via e-mail. Just goes to show the power of the action of a single person. I hope McCaffrey sent that reader some free autographed swag, or took them out to dinner.
Hey, maybe someone should give that reader a book deal. Gotta capitalize on those 15 minutes, just like Viswanathan did. It’s the American way.
I imagine that even with higher sales McCafferty is feeling sick over the whole thing. How can she not?
I remember reading about the whole Nora Roberts and Janet Daily thing and imagining the sick feeling Nora must have had in having to follow up on this kind of thing. Plagerism is not something you can just let go and I’m sure Janet had lots of friends at the time who dissed Nora.
Yes, plot elements and types of characters do get repeated. The reader public gets hungry for Scottish heroes and suddenly every hero’s last name is McGregor or McSomething. We see it all the time. However, it’s pretty clear cut when you can look at passages or even at whole scenes from a book and see gross similarities. THAT is easy to decipher and it is plagerism.
Huh. How about reviews? I’d just discovered that one reviewer has ‘borrowed’ some aspects of my recent book review for her review. A regular visitor of my blog alerted me to this yesterday. After reading the other review, I couldn’t argue with her finding because the naughty review contains, among other stuff, one delibrate mistake I created to avoid having a major plot spoiler in my review. Frankly, I’m still wrapping my head around this relevation because a) I’m a terrible reviewer and b) I rarely do book reviews.
I do wonder how common this problem is among reviewers online and in print? I suppose, as my husband always says, there’s no limit to stupidity.
Thanks for the well-researched article, Sarah. It bothers me too that so little interest is being shown in Alloy/17th Street Productions (with both publishers, as of the 27th saying that Alloy wasn’t involved at all). I wonder if the power that Alloy has is affecting this “belief.” By owning the copyrights to books 1,7 and 9 on the NYT childrens list; having the power and resources to promote and reach a demographic that most publishers don’t have the time for; and having the connections to get the movie deals (Brasharas, Viswanathan, and what do you want to bet that Gossip Girl and the A List have been optioned as well) they are a profitable enterprise that can promise results. And profit is the name of the game.
Slate.com has written a couple of pieces about how involved Alloy/17th St. actually were in the editing process. They were quite involved and knew Viswanathan was a fan of McCafferty in high school.
I’d just discovered that one reviewer has ‘borrowed’ some aspects of my recent book review for her review.
AW SNAP! Seriously? Damn.
(Now you KNOW I’m going to bug you for names, right?)
I’ll cop to reading other reviews while I’m writing mine, mostly from Amazon.com or AAR—I want to know what other reviewers and readers thought, and I also like seeing how other people do their plot summaries. I don’t think I’ve plagiarized, though.
And yes, it’s interesting how Alloy/17th St. and the editors are getting off very, very lightly. Not that Viswanathan doesn’t deserve her share of the blame pie, but the way this whole business was set up makes one think…..
Now I’m feeling guilty for linking to two SB reviews and saying “Yeah, I pretty much think the same things they did, so I’m not going to write a whole lot…” But I didn’t copy the text, I swear!
I agree that the focus on an absolutely stupid bad move by a 19 year old first time author as opposed to focusing on a multimedia operation that has the power, clout, and history to copycat someone else’s work is at the least inappropriate and at most suspicious. The individual transgressor gets the lion’s share of the negative press while the institution that may have pressured the transgression gets a minor look and explanation? That’s horsecrap.
I couldn’t agree more with those who point out that Alloy/17th Street is clearly neck-deep in the fault for the copycatting, but all of the focus seems to be on McCafferty and Viswanathan. It’s probably just easier and sexier to talk about a girlfight than to try to pin down a complex media conglomorate.
As I argued in my blog today, I think the major problem this points out (along with the disrespect for a younger audience, which I agree sucks) is the publishing industry’s frantic need for another hit, using the same formula as the last one. Yep, it’s true that pretty much all forms of media fall prey to this one, especially when corporations run with stockholder profits in mind are making the calls. But there are creative, unique works being published out there, often by independent presses, and if they don’t make the bestseller lists (with or without the help of scandals), they’ll be around a lot longer than this season’s blockbuster.
Sarah, stories about cheating Harvard students sell papers; stories about structural corruption in the publishing industry don’t. And anyway, it’s the American way to be interested in anecdote, not analysis.
Robin, it’s absolutely true that Viswanathan is getting a lot of shit from her fellow Harvard students due to ultracompetitiveness. But I don’t think she can complain too much, since ultra-competitiveness is what got her into Harvard in the first place. As soon as I heard that Viswanathan was a Harvard sophomore I thought, “Ah, the application edge,” and sure enough, it says in the NY Times article that Viswanathan was hooked up with her agent by *the private counselor hired by her parents to help her with the college application process.* Getting into a big-name university is a cut-throat undertaking nowadays, and kids will do anything to make themselves stand out from the crowd. That is a mentality that absolutely encourages cheating, and why not? A Harvard diploma is a big advantage in life, whereas our society is really pretty lenient towards cheaters. As others have mentioned above, getting caught at plagiarism hasn’t prevented people from getting back into writing. I’m sure that even James Frey will bounce back eventually. We as a society are sending very mixed messages to kids about cheating, and they are smart enough to pick up on that. But that’s definitely *not* a story that will sell newspapers.
Maybe I just have more spleen than the average bear, but it burns me up that basically NOTHING appears to be happening to any of the asshats associated with this story/crime.
Yes, they’re pulling the book from the shelves . . . for REWRITES! Yes, there’s a poor little Harvard student who’s going to catch crap for a while (but it doesn’t look like Harvard thinks a major instance of plagiarism is an egregious enough offence to get her expelled), and she freaken DESERVES every spit wad she gets hit with (and then some).
And yeah, I’d really really really like to see the copyright co-holder have their ass handed to them in court, but that’s not going to happen.
And yeah, I’d really really really like to see the copyright co-holder have their ass handed to them in court, but that’s not going to happen.
My feelings on this seem to be evolving in the same direction as yesterday’s Slate article:
“Viswanathan herself has not been so lucky. The darker moral of her story seems to be that if you succeed by packaging, you can expect to fail by packaging, too—and you alone, not your packagers, will pay the price. . . . I don’t mean simply to let Viswanathan off the hook, but her own book—indeed, its very copyright line, Alloy Entertainment and Kaavya Viswanathan—suggests a broader culture of adult-mediated promotion and strategizing at work. It’s a culture, as her novel itself shows, that might well leave a teenager very confused about what counts as originality—even a teenager who can write knowingly about just that confusion. In fact, perhaps being able to write so knowingly about derivative self-invention is a recipe for being ripe to succumb to it. Viswanathan may not be a victim, exactly—she’s too willing for that—but she is only one of many players here.”
The entire article is here: http://www.slate.com/id/2140683/?nav=tap3
The one thing that keeps sort of circling in my brain is that Viswanathan is the only one in this fiasco who has taken ANY responsibility—even if you don’t buy her unconscious appropriation defense—and yet she’s the one who has been unremittingly and singularly assailed as a thief and a liar. I’m well aware of the paradox inherent in saying that one told the truth about lying; I’m not being that simplistic here. And I understand that at the very least Viswanathan is complicit in a theft of intellectual property, and I realize that she took the money and agreed to have this book formulated, etc. etc. etc. But let’s say—just hypothetically—that Viswanathan didn’t write those particular passages; or that she didn’t write them alone; or that she was given lots of “models” to “help” her find her voice. Then she’s in kind of a bind, isn’t she? If she denies wholly writing the book, it’s NOT her original work and she exposes the sham of a basically prefab book project.
I really do understand the outrage that has ensued among genre fiction readers over the supposition that we will buy anything packaged properly or that all this “stuff” is just the same and can be corporately produced. But I’m not sure quickly stringing Viswanathan up as the lone plagiarist vindicates the originality of genre fiction or the values of intellectual honesty and creative originality.
I’ll come clean (and make it potentially easy for folks to figure out Who I Am, mwahahah) and disclose one of the reasons I am so curious about the Bitchery’s attitude about plagiarism and cheating: back in 1992, my high school was written up in the Wall Street Journal as an example of the chating pandemic in highly-ranked American high schools. Cheating on the SAT wasn’t the half of it: answers hidden in the graphics calculators provided by the school, passing of copies of tests between classes, and friends giving other friends the essay questions during finals were normal and expected. I remember clearly sitting next to someone in Freshman English who had gotten the final exam essay question from her friend the day before, written her essay at home, memorized the damn thing, and then recited it to herself under her breath the whole time I was trying to take the freaking exam.
So while I was not adverse to cheating myself (hey, if everyone is using it to get ahead, why cheat myself by not cheating?) I know the punishment for that cheating coming public, too. The article was published in June of 1992, when the students implicated had already graduated AND gotten into college. The class that followed, my graduating class, had to endure the stigma of being from “the Cheating High School” and a good number of us, myself included, had trouble getting into college. While we were many of us guilty of cheating in one way or another, we got the shaft for what some people in the class ahead of us did – namely, cheating on the SAT.
So on one hand, I’m a monster about plagiarism and cheating, and on the other I understand why it happens and how the environment that fosters competition, cutthroat attacks on colleagues, and holds profit and success above all other values can easily create a easy quick path to cheating.
Funny how publishing resembles high school.
Maili asked, “I do wonder how common this problem is among reviewers online and in print?”
You’d be surprised. Chunks of text from the (very few) reviews I’ve done have shown up on several fly-by-night review sites. These were particularly snarky reviews with some odd word choices, so the likelihood that someone independently came up with the same text is unlikely.
Oh, let us ponder the shitstorm should Candy or I find that our reviews have been stolen. We’d need our own Wikipedia entry just to describe the fallout.
Glad to learn of the distinction between plagiarism and just borrowing somebody’s plot. Nora Roberts re-wrote (and oddly enough for her—re-wrote badly) one of Dame Mary Stewart’s novels. The NR version was for Harlequin and was only around for a couple of months—early 80’s and re-release last year. Pissed me off when I released what NR had done. But, I guess it’s okay. And Shakespeare did it too.