{"id":3022,"date":"2006-04-24T19:30:00","date_gmt":"2006-04-24T19:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=3022"},"modified":"2018-11-20T05:25:24","modified_gmt":"2018-11-20T05:25:24","slug":"kaavya-viswanathan-too-good-to-be-true","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=3022","title":{"rendered":"Kaavya Viswanathan: Too Good To Be True?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i>Eeeeouch!<\/i> Last April I <a href=\"http:\/\/writingya.blogspot.com\/2005\/04\/wonders-never-cease-500k-book-deals.html\">mentioned the story of a very lucky girl<\/a> who got into Harvard just about the time she got a very lucrative two book deal. At the time, I was a bit scared for her &#8212; only 17, and already &#8212; wow. I spoke at my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.puc.edu\">undergrad alma mater<\/a> about this 17-year-old girl who had gotten a <strong>$500K book deal<\/strong> based on a couple of chapters she&#8217;d written and told them that no, they&#8217;d have to work a bit harder, <i>this kind of stuff never happens<\/i>. It seems I may have been more right than I knew&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Like many other writers, I was a bit green with envy over this young woman&#8217;s succeess &#8212; but now I&#8217;m a bit nervous for Kaavya Viswanathan, now 19. Recent allegations claim that entire phrases from her book <a href=\"http:\/\/books.monstersandcritics.com\/fiction\/reviews\/article_1155331.php\/Book_Review_How_Opal_Mehta_Got_Kissed_Got_Wild_and_Got_a_Life_by_Kaavya_Viswanathan\">How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life,<\/a> are taken from Megan F. McCafferty 2001 novel <a href=\"http:\/\/www.meganmccafferty.com\/sloppy_firsts.html\">&#8220;Sloppy Firsts&#8221;<\/a> and the 2003 sequel <a href=\"http:\/\/www.meganmccafferty.com\/second_helpings.html\">&#8220;Second Helpings.&#8221;<\/a> There is, in fact, a full 14 word paragraph that is all McCafferty with only the names changed.<\/p>\n<p>My stomach just <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thecrimson.com\/article.aspx?ref=512968\">knots<\/a> as I read the comments from the Harvard newspaper, where Viswanathan is a student. Much has been made of this obviously bright girl, but it does seem that her fairy-tale beginning was just too good to be true, and that sharp readers are already joining the fray to make sure and pick out <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thecrimson.com\/article.aspx?ref=512965\">every single incidence<\/a> where she could have taken her pieces of work from somewhere else.<\/p>\n<p>Viswanathan is the youngest author signed by Little, Brown in decades, and the movie rights for the novel have already been sold to DreamWorks.<\/p>\n<p>Ouch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Eeeeouch! Last April I mentioned the story of a very lucky girl who got into Harvard just about the time she got a very&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-3022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-views"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3022"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3514,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3022\/revisions\/3514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}