I'm okay with plagarism in fiction. It's fiction. I want it to be good. I don't care if it's original. The stories of materialistic academically savvy girls are much the same across the world. I'm coming down on the side of Kaavya Viswanathan.
If there is a story here, it's this whole "book packager" business, and how and at what cost a book packager secures a 500,000 contract and a movie deal on such a light story.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Wait a minute...because you're OK with plagiarism in fiction, publishers and the community at large should be as well? People should be paid for using the work of someone else?
That's just absurd. Whether or not she is to be believed when she says it was unintentional is another matter. I am ambivalent about that.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
If the complaint is ten or twenty passages that sound like rewrites, just have her change them and go on with it. If she is telling the truth, and she truly did internalise the stories and then just rewrote them in her head, then it was an honest mistake. Sounds unlikely, but it's possible. I doubt anyone bought these books just because of those passages. So change them to something original and go back to business as usual.
I don't think for the sake of this book, a sentence here or a sentence there can make or break it. The basic plot is still intact, and the plot isn't what is being accused of plagiarism. I agree with giving her a break.
I might change my opion though, as more information comes to light. I'd like to know how the authors of the other books feel. If it were found that she DID intentionally copy, then I'd agree to punishments. And what similarities are there in plot between the books. But I don't agree with punitive punishments for people who unintentionally screw up. She's lost her book and movie deal, as, if she copied on purpose, she should have lost anyway at the very least. Need more information on this one.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
Is the list at the end of the article complete?
Posted by camus (Member # 8052) on :
quote:Random House-which claims there are as many as 45 similar passages
That seems like more than just a mere coincidence. I'm curious about how similar the stories are in general.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
So, the same guy who says he would be a suicide bomber to protect our culture from encroaching capitalism, is perfectly willing to accept people making a buck off other people's creativity? Well, that makes a lot of sense, to be sure.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
Yeah, but if the list in the story is representative of the type of similarities - if they're really using "passages" to mean "single sentences with much the same wording" - then I find the story of accidental infringement much more believable, and I'm not sure it warrents such a strong reaction.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
Dag, nope, she lifted from other books as well. ______
I don't care if she internalized them or if she wrote from looking at the text. She pooled all of her resources and created the best story she could from it. I don't care if she had a stack of chick-lit fiction in front of her. Fitting all of the pieces together in a compelling way can be part of writing a book. This isn't science, journalism, or law, it's fiction. The appearance of a coherent story that speaks to the reader is the goal. The book isn't any more or less worth reading because it's hodgepodge of other writers, distilled by her brain, and put to the page.
Fiction shouldn't have to footnoted, if it gets so bad, people could do what Kingsolver did with the Poisonwood Bible and just put on the back page a big list of all of the books she read while writing the book.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
No, but it might be exposing the publisher to serious liability, so it's no surprise they're dropping her.
Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
quote:Online newspaper Harvard Independent even came up with a portal dubbed "Kaavyagate" (in obvious reference to the notorious scams of Watergate and Irangate).
Off topic, that sentence annoys me. A lot. First of all, "Irangate" was so called because of Watergate. Second of all, it's a very widely used convention to slap "gate" on the end of something to signal a scandal. Third of all, don't assume your readers are freakin' idiots.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
I don't have a problem with the publisher dropping her, especially if she keeps lying about it. I just don't like all of the personal castigating that's going on surrounding her.
Again, I think that if this were a work of science or law, where the procedure is as important as the outcome, my views would be different, but that's not the case.
[ May 05, 2006, 05:08 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by camus (Member # 8052) on :
The more I think about this, the harder I find it to believe that she intentionally plagiarized.
For example, look at this sentence that she supposedly copied:
"Five department stores, and 170 specialty shops later, I was sick of listening to her hum along to Alicia Keys..."
I find it hard to believe that she could write 99.9% of a story herself but then need to copy a pretty worthless sentence like this from someone else. I think I can believe her story about internalising the other stories.
Posted by ricree101 (Member # 7749) on :
Anyone else think that they were kind of reaching in some of the examples at the end of the article? I can agree that some of them appear to be more or less lifted from the other book. Still, for at least half of them the connection seemed kind of vague to me.
Since I haven't read any of the books mentioned, I'll admit that I can't comment on similarities in the overall tone and story of the work. I just think that if there really are 45 of these "similarities" then it shouldn't have been that hard to make all six clearly demonstrate the plagarism.
Posted by MightyCow (Member # 9253) on :
I don't think you can use the idea that she's copying crappy sentences as a defense. Wouldn't it stand to reason that if she can't writer her own book, she doesn't know enough to realize that she's copying worthless sentences? Besides, these are previously published crap phrases. At least she knows someone will buy them.
Posted by camus (Member # 8052) on :
quote:Wouldn't it stand to reason that if she can't writer her own book, she doesn't know enough to realize that she's copying worthless sentences?
Well, no. She obviously can write at least 99.9% of a book. And those are pretty arbitrary sentences. Why go out of your way to copy something that isn't really saying anything significant anyway? She wrote thousands of sentences, why copy those and not any of the other meaningless ones?
If those sentences had some specific meaning or value to them, then maybe I'd be a bit more skeptical about her claim. But instead, those sentences are equivalent to saying "and the sky was blue today." It seems like a lot of work for her to go through for absolutely no benefit.
Posted by erosomniac (Member # 6834) on :
quote:Anyone else think that they were kind of reaching in some of the examples at the end of the article? I can agree that some of them appear to be more or less lifted from the other book. Still, for at least half of them the connection seemed kind of vague to me.
Since I haven't read any of the books mentioned, I'll admit that I can't comment on similarities in the overall tone and story of the work. I just think that if there really are 45 of these "similarities" then it shouldn't have been that hard to make all six clearly demonstrate the plagarism.
I was thinking the same thing. The first few were more or less identical; the rest could have been found in almost ANY book of the same basic theme.
Posted by MightyCow (Member # 9253) on :
I don't plan to read any of the books involved, but I have to wonder how much of the rest of her story is just pieced together from the other books. If she's copying nearly word for word 40-some phrases, how much of the rest of the work is just rewording of someone else's writing? I don't buy the internalizing other people's phrases stuff.
Posted by ricree101 (Member # 7749) on :
quote:Originally posted by MightyCow: I don't plan to read any of the books involved, but I have to wonder how much of the rest of her story is just pieced together from the other books. If she's copying nearly word for word 40-some phrases, how much of the rest of the work is just rewording of someone else's writing? I don't buy the internalizing other people's phrases stuff.
The thing is, at the moment all we have to go on is their statement that she lifted around fourty phrases from those books. As I said earlier, several of the examples given were pretty generic and I think it is a bit of a stretch to call them plagiarism.
I suspect that the samples were chosen with the intent to clearly demonstrate that she had copied them from other sources. Even if those are well representative of all the allegedly copied parts, I'd still expect there to be no more than 15-20 of the total that I would actually consider outright copied.
If the high end numbers are the case, then it is a bit troubling. That said, having about 20 non original sentences out of an entire novel doesn't really seem to merit the reaction that occured.
Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
They didn't look copied word for word to me. And they were mostly common ways to say something. I mean, if you're explaining an injury, how many ways are there to say "I got this scar/burn on my hand/wrist by using a bottle opener/iron"? If the plots or characters were similar, that would be a problem. But grouping basic english words together -- statistically there are only so many combinations possible.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
The first 3 or 4 are far too similar (although I believe it might be unintentional). But the rest?
They must be kidding.
quote:Originally posted by ketchupqueen:
quote:Online newspaper Harvard Independent even came up with a portal dubbed "Kaavyagate" (in obvious reference to the notorious scams of Watergate and Irangate).
Off topic, that sentence annoys me. A lot. First of all, "Irangate" was so called because of Watergate. Second of all, it's a very widely used convention to slap "gate" on the end of something to signal a scandal. Third of all, don't assume your readers are freakin' idiots.
Well, this article was originally written for a non-American audience.
Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
I just want to figure out how to get a half million dollar book deal. I'm serious. I've got several ideas. I could write a story without plagarizing.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote:I just want to figure out how to get a half million dollar book deal. I'm serious. I've got several ideas. I could write a story without plagarizing.
1) Write something worth reading
2) Enlist a "Book Packaging" firm. ____________
There are some interesting issues at play here. I, personally, am interested about how much the money involved is motivating the public outrage, and I'm also curious as to how of much of this drama, and her lying about(which I believe she is), is fueled by our myth of self-sufficiency.
I'm disappointed in the author for a few reasons, mainly the lying. I take the bit about internalizing for a line. I think she had the book open in front of her, and rephrased the sentence in a way she found more appropriate. Not only do I find that appropriate, I think that it's advisable. Imitation and play are wonderful conduits for learning. At least that's been the case in my experience, in music and with respect to writing. It's too bad that both books are recent, and the revenue disparity between the too so great. Had she done the same with Dickens, I doubt that there would be such an uproar.
_____________
After I'm finished with this current project, I wanted to take a year and recast the Iliad in a University setting, with Professors as gods, Grad students as the heroes, and the Undergrads as the footsoldiers. Instead of wars, there are conferences. I aimed to follow Homer's structure as close as my fancy, but then deviate as the muse calls. Except if anybody asks me where I got the idea for the characters and the structure of the plot, I'm not going to hesitate to say Homer. Heck, I could create an industry of students writing papers and drawing parallels.
[ May 06, 2006, 01:45 AM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
I would argue that there's a difference between allusion and theft. Of course, since she's contracted someone to essentially write the book for her -- someone who, incidentally, also largely "wrote" the book she's accused of ripping off -- that's a finer line for her than for others.
The world of hip-hop sampling hasn't quite made it to literary circles, and I'm not sure it should.