Can We Have Some More Controversy, Please?

Well, since the April 18th post went up, my traffic has jumped quite a bit. After doing a bit of digging, I realized that it now seems miss Kaavya Viswanathan is being accused of plagiarism. Are you starting to notice a pattern here? Publicity now seems to go hand-in-hand with controversy. Popular authors, be warned!

This article that I’m referencing comes from an anonymous comment from that post. Thanks to whoever left it. It’s a very thorough piece that even compares the “alleged” plagiarized sentences between the two works.

I read the comparisons, and have to say that I’m a bit intrigued now. I see a bit of a resemblance (and maybe that’s enough – or not). It’s going to be a long battle as there were no blatant copies, at least from what I could tell.

I’m also interested to see what the ramifications are going to be. Will Kaavya lose that 500k contract? Will she gain millions, like James Frey did? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Read the article and tell me whether you think plagiarism is involved.

UPDATE:  It looks like Kaavya has admitted to copying, however, it looks like she may not be completely off of the hook yet.

Comments

[Z]

There is no way she didn't copy with the sentences given and it looks like she even tried to hide it a little bit, but not much.

This was not "internalization", this was flat out plagerism.

[Rudyoncal]

Good luck buddy. Hope you feel better soon.

[Jillian]

Dang, I did it again.....

Go ahead, slap me with the Moron Award.

:(

[Jillian]

Oh dear -- not a fun way to lose a few pounds!

Rest well and heal quickly.

[Jamie Ford]

Ugly. Sad too. I mean, it's a chick lit thing anyway right. You say "like" a million times so there's bound to be some similarities.

[Bryan D. Catherman]

Listen to some of this by NPR at:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?
storyId=5362379&ft=1&f=1032