CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Harvard sophomore Kaavya Viswanathan, 19, blames acid reflux for the numerous and striking similarities between her chick-lit novel, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life, and two books by Megan McCafferty: Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings.
In an interview yesterday at the office of Little, Brown and Company, her publisher, Ms. Viswanathan confessed that she has suffered from acid reflux since she was a junior in high school. Protonix™, the medication she takes to control the condition, makes her dizzy and forgetful, she said.
“When I’m on Protonix™, it’s almost as if I’m channeling another person,” said Ms. Viswanathan, who admitted to “maybe unintentionally replicating” portions of Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings in How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life.
Ms. Viswanathan, who said her medication-induced replication was “spontaneous and unconscious,” had begun reading Ms. McCafferty’s books in high school and had read them “three or four times” before she began writing Opal the summer after she had graduated from high school.
A native of India, Ms. Viswanathan also blamed her “unintentional” plagiarism on her photographic memory and the American educational system.
“I remember by reading,” she said. “I never have to resort to taking notes, and when it’s time for exams, I simply give my teachers back the assigned reading. That’s how I get such excellent grades. It’s also how Ms. McCafferty’s words sneaked into my book, I suppose.”
Both Opal and Sloppy Firsts are about a girl who lives in New Jersey, wants to get into an Ivy League school, has three close girlfriends, falls for a scruffy musician, and makes a triumphant graduation speech. Nevertheless, Ms. Viswanathan insisted, her book was her own because she had never read a novel with an Indian-American protagonist.
Steve Ross of Crown publishing, which published Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings, called Ms. Viswanathan’s explanation “troubling and disingenuous.”
“It sounds to me as if she also suffers from hemorrhoids,” he said. “This is not just an example of one, two, or half-a-dozen similarities. We’re talking about forty-plus borrowings, and I use that term loosely. The notion that this is accidental or unintentional stretches credibility to the breaking point.”
According to the Harvard Crimson, which first broke the story of Ms. Viswanathan’s plagiarism, this is not the first time she has been involved in illegal copying.
“She has a huge pirated collection of Bollywood films and rap music,” said Tripp Lodge, the Crimson‘s entertainment editor.
“She also turned in a term paper during her freshman year that was a word-for-word rip from her roommate. Kaavya talked her way out of that one by claiming she had written her paper on her roommate’s laptop after the battery in her own laptop had died. She said she must have accidentally printed out the file containing her roommate’s paper and then deleted the file containing her own paper.”
Buzz Cabot, sports editor of the Crimson, accused Ms. Viswanathan of copying most of the love letters she had sent him.
“I broke up with her when I realized this,” said Mr. Cabot, “then she had the gall to send me a poem she had copied from Emily Dickinson and pretend it was her own. I’m beginning to wonder if Kaavya Viswanathan is even her real name.”
Little, Brown and Company is understandably anxious to avoid having to recall Opal, which is virtually assured of benefiting from the publicity surrounding it. The publisher has offered to re-brand the book as a literary parody, hoping that the fair use doctrine will save Ms. Viswanathan from legal charges.
Should that fail, Little, Brown is ready to add the tag line “as told by Megan McCafferty” to future editions of Opal and to give Ms McCafferty one third of all profits.
Meanwhile, Ms. Viswanathan has begun work on her second novel, In Her Shoes Closet, about two Indian-American sisters—one smart and plain, the other dumb and pretty—who don’t get along.
In related news, James Frey, who admitted to making up most of A Million Little Pieces, his alleged memoir, has sent Kaavya Viswanathan an e-mail, asking if she would like to collaborate on a screen play about a lunkhead president who agrees to appear as a guest host on a popular talent show.
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