A Plagiarist’s Tale

June 10, 2006 by Gautam.

This week internet has exploded in news and analysis of Kaavya Viswanathan’s tale of plagiarism. I found this article to be very informative with lots of links to other resources. I definitely sympathize with her although I doubt it was an act of unintentional internalization, as she described it. But she is young, beautiful, charming, and claims to have a photographic memory (in fact I am also developing a photographic memory of her photographs available in the net), I hope she will get over this quickly and have a great literary career. Since her publisher has taken the book, ‘How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life’, off of the book shelves in the country, I wonder what they will do with those books. Just recycle it? The paper, of course. I don’t know why they don’t give it away for free to people like me. I never buy a book, always wait until it is made into a movie, and then wait until it comes to a dollar theater near me. Alas, in this case, it will never happen. I sometime see if it is available for download from the internet and then I print it out and put it on the desk, making it carefully visible. But if I get book itself, guess how impressive it will be to people? Oh, what an avid reader he is, they will say. Then I can say how I thought some of the paragraphs may not have been her own. When asked how I came to this conclusion, I would rather smile and leave it to their imagination. I want to end with an appeal. Kaavya, do you find these writeups funny or enlightening? Then feel free internalize it. I won’t complain to anybody. If you even contact me, I can even write some stuff for you free as you seem to be very busy with harvard course work and constant push from publishers, which is probably what might have driven you to copying from other people’s writings. I also have another question? What about the people who has already bought the book? Why should not they be refunded?

Posted in Current Events | Print | No Comments »