Shadenfreuden
Kaavya Viswanathan
Wow, has this been one juicy story. In case you haven't heard, Ms. Viswanathan got a $500,000 advance for two books before she even finished the first one and she was only seventeen years old when she got this book deal. Well, she's a sophomore at Harvard and is now nineteen and her book How Opal Mehta got kissed, Got Wild and got a life! Just came out to a large fanfare and was selling very well. Then it came out that 40 passages in her book were similar to another author's. At first her publisher was going to recall the book, change the passages and put it back out there then lo and behold two more books have come forward that have similar passages. Well now Ms. Viswanathan has lost her book deal, the book is being recalled and will never come back and her Hollywood deal is toast. She claimed that she internalized the passages but I have a hard time believing that this happened so many times. It's a damn shame because I've read that she's very intelligent and a great writer. There was no need for her to do such a thing. Plagiarism is the worst offense for a writer. This could be the kiss of death for her. I wouldn't be surprised if Harvard throws her out of school. We'll have to see where this whole thing leads to. I did read that Harvard is so competitive that there was HUGE jealousy amongst her fellow students and they're reveling in her downfall. This phenomenon of having joy in the downfall of others is called Shadenfreuden.
Wow, has this been one juicy story. In case you haven't heard, Ms. Viswanathan got a $500,000 advance for two books before she even finished the first one and she was only seventeen years old when she got this book deal. Well, she's a sophomore at Harvard and is now nineteen and her book How Opal Mehta got kissed, Got Wild and got a life! Just came out to a large fanfare and was selling very well. Then it came out that 40 passages in her book were similar to another author's. At first her publisher was going to recall the book, change the passages and put it back out there then lo and behold two more books have come forward that have similar passages. Well now Ms. Viswanathan has lost her book deal, the book is being recalled and will never come back and her Hollywood deal is toast. She claimed that she internalized the passages but I have a hard time believing that this happened so many times. It's a damn shame because I've read that she's very intelligent and a great writer. There was no need for her to do such a thing. Plagiarism is the worst offense for a writer. This could be the kiss of death for her. I wouldn't be surprised if Harvard throws her out of school. We'll have to see where this whole thing leads to. I did read that Harvard is so competitive that there was HUGE jealousy amongst her fellow students and they're reveling in her downfall. This phenomenon of having joy in the downfall of others is called Shadenfreuden.
posted by dennis at 3:52 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home