What Kaavya Viswanathan and James Frey did aren't even remotely the same thing. Viswanathan's transgression is far, far worse.
A Google search on the two names Kaavya Viswanathan and James Frey this morning produced 362 results. Almost all of them comparisons between the two. One half-assed attempt at snark on a blog wrote "How Kaavya Viswanathan got rich, got caught, and got ruined... and became best friends with James Frey." Another calls Viswanathan "the new James Frey."…
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26 - Phillip Winn
Frey's offense was in passing off a work of fiction as non-fiction. The story is that he tried to shop it as fiction first and got no takers, and hit the big time with Oprah by pretending it was all true. Frey's mistakes were *outside* of the book. Stock it on the fiction shelves and nobody cares.
Viswanathan's offense, on the other hand, is unfixable. No matter where you stock it, the book is heavily plagiarized. It's the work of other people with her name on it. Her mistakes were *inside* the book and irredeemable.
Which is worse? Now you're talking about a value judgment, and everybody's got a different answer. By asking how to solve each, it's easy to see that Viswanathan's offense is worse: it can't be fixed, while Frey's can. But if you ask which has caused more damage to credibility, Frey's offense is worse: Oprah made a fool of herself on Larry King Live, then made a fool of Frey to try and recover. Which has earned the author more money? Some people might see that as a big factor. Viswanathan earned $500,000, while Frey presumably earned millions, so Frey's offense is worse by that standard. Which author was more stupid? Viswanathan should have known that plagiarism is easily caught in this modern age, while Frey didn't get stupid until his book was picked by Oprah, at which point it was too late to turn back, so Viswanathan was easily the more stupid of the two.
And on it goes. Pick a standard, and assign values based on that. In any case, Viswanathan's book is unfixable, while Frey's is still selling.
27 - ScScott Butki
Very well said, Phillip - it's all in how you compare things.
II still think a memoir full of lies about real living people can be more damaging - especially when dealing with issues like prison, drugs and suicides - can be much more damaging than someone stealing fiction.
Incidentally the latest is she also stole from
Salmon Rushdie.
I'm tempted to think we should start a new list of authors she did NOT steal from.
28 - Alexandra
Incidentally, she stole from Meg Cabot as well: Maybe the title of the list should be "Writers who will not be suing Viswanathan for copyright infringement"
What I want to know was how an intelligent girl like herself thought she would get away with something like this. Was the book deal too much pressure and she felt like she had to produce something soon to satisfy the publisher? What I really don't want to see is her profiting in any way from this event. No memoirs 10 years from now about it, no movies, nothing. What she did was illegal, she knew that and she did it anyway.
As for Frey, I really didn't care what was embellished or not, and I don't think a lot of other readers did either. In fact if Oprah hadn't chosen it for her book club (and to be honest when she did I thought there were a lot better memoirs out there she could have chosen from) no one would even care about this event. I don't think the lies here and there took away from the real point of the story which was his road to becoming sober. His story has helped other alcoholics understand their addiction and work toward becoming sober, which is more than any of us can probably say.
29 - Scot Butki
The interesting thing that has to be fully explained with the "novelist" is that she used a book packaging firm and it's unclear how much of the book they prepared and wrote. That's not to say she is not ultimately to blame but the impression I've read is they also share some culpability.
30 - Scott Butki
A good piece in Slate
Has any plagiarist ever owned up to stealing"deliberately"another writer's words? None that I can recall. Mostly they peddle apologies and excuses like the ones offered by Harvard student and novelist Kaavya Viswanathan, whom the Harvard Crimson busted this week for word thievery. Viswanathan tells the New York Times that the 29 cited instances in which she lifted from another novelist's language for her novel were "unintentional and unconscious."
31 - Jewels
She should have blamed it on Ambien it seems the popular thing to do these days.
Regarding Frey, unfortunate he stooped to such low levels to market his book, but at least for a while, the book was doing some good for folks with addictions. Like Winn said, Frey's error is somewhat repairable whereas Viswanathan's ridiculous pretense at writing a book is not.
32 - Sam
Its only plagiarism
So what? Did she kill someone?
Get a life you all!!
Its only plagiarism...only plagiarism...only plagiarism
do u realise now?
Whether kaavya admits it or denies it...its just plagiarism for crying out loud.