Gothamist: Harvard Student Copies Columbia Alum's Chick Lit

Luciano Pace

Thu, 07 Dec 2006 05:50:21 -0500

The Rolling Stones postpone a show in the US to allow singer Sir Mick Jagger time to rest his voice...

Austyn Carlos

Sun, 12 Nov 2006 08:35:28 -0500

Classical singer Russell Watson postpones his forthcoming UK tour after undergoing brain surgery...

sylfmcy@email.com

Wed, 26 Apr 2006 13:51:37 -0500

online directory main

Dave H.

Wed, 26 Apr 2006 11:23:13 -0500

Schadenfreude is best used when rhymed, alliterated, or assonated with another obscure and/or foreign term. Difficult, but prudent. I'm just saying; best practice.

Twinpeeks

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 23:42:13 -0500

schadenfreude= malicious

emmarose

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 17:10:46 -0500

Ted Fuller

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 17:08:53 -0500

Hmmm...this could get a lot uglier: http://www.harvardindependent.com/ViewArticle.aspx?ArticleID=9911

wside

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 16:37:16 -0500

columbia students are smart enough and pretentious enough to use schadenfreude without hipsters to impress

not ggggg

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 15:38:54 -0500

gggg, what's with dismissing this? she was paid half a million dollars for a plagiarized novel!! wowzers! that advance has to come from somewhere. just because you're off chasing old copies of pynchon or trying to show off your bruised copy of an old mann tome, doesn't mean that people aren't buying chick lit far more often. it's been a LONG time since superb writers have made good money from advances, and until then, the money is with plagiarizing chick lit writers.

gggggg

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 15:13:37 -0500

Ah, who cares. Since when does this crap merit this much concern? Next we'll be tackling the controversey behind Harlequin's using Fabio's likeness on the cover of their latest Pathmark Special with only his expressed oral consent.

Dave Green

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 13:57:38 -0500

This is all sickeningly similar to the Brad Vice story: http://www.nypress.com/18/48/news&columns/RobertClarkYoung.cfm He was ultimately denied tenure and fired.

The Actual Jen from the Spec

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 13:50:01 -0500

No, I only use schadenfreude when I'm feeling really gleeful about other people's misfortunes. Which is actually pretty often. And actually that quote was from my blog, which is even more ridiculous.

Sonya

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 13:13:53 -0500

I think Ms. Viswanathan's half-hearted admission of her actions is completely pathetic. It is obvious to anyone who reads the passages from the two texts that she copied the precise phrasing, merely changing incidental details to make the work appear original. I don't care how old she is, there is no excuse for plagarism and her response is indicative that she will never accept responsibility for her actions and or learn her lesson. Anyone who buys that book is wasting their money. Her advance should be returned to the publisher and I would hope that any option she has with Dreamworks will lapse. I work with writers who spend their entire lives trying to get a novel published or a screenplay produced. If she manages to achieve even a modicum of success after this, then that says precious little about the values in our society.

Murali

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 13:08:14 -0500

WHy do you complain about some one copying mere words,,Can she copy the feeling ?? All these books are without real feeling.. This is a poem i wrote ..when i saw some people copying life style itself. ********************* Imitation This World is copying itself and yet cursing every otherself Lost to the beauty of its own self; twisting, torturing and copying life we think we are all safe yet mankind is full of strife Imitation is the root cause of sorrow Stagnancy finally for those who borrow;

another anon

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 13:02:17 -0500

"a few similar lines or paragraphs taken from some no name author" McCafferty isn't exactly a "no name author"--her current book debuted at #19 on the NYT best seller list (before this controversy broke), and her first two books have sold over 300,000 copies, according to her publisher. makes you wonder how Viswanathan thought she could get away with it.

Anon.

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 12:19:30 -0500

How about that cover? Looks almost exactly like the cover of another incredibly bad piece of chick lit, Jennifer Weiner's "Good In Bed".

dd

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 11:40:47 -0500

From NYT: In a profile published in The New York Times earlier this month, Ms. Viswanathan said that while she was in high school, her parents hired Katherine Cohen, founder of IvyWise, a private counseling service, to help with the college application process. After reading some of Ms. Viswanathan's writing, Ms. Cohen put her in touch with the William Morris Agency, and Ms. Viswanathan eventually signed with Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, an agent there. Maybe not smart enough to get into Harvard, just rich enough.

yes, and

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 10:59:23 -0500

word, famdoc, word. she got paid 500K for her supposed "talent". not to copy and paste. i can do that for god's sake. the only good thing is that it makes me less envious of creative types since it seems now they aren't always that talented. they just steal work from other people. easy peasy.

Tim N.

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 10:52:04 -0500

homeopt... polysyllabics getting the better of you? Of course she copied it. Duh. And now she's trying to cute her way through it, like Jim Frey tried to recovering victim his way through it. It will work about as well, especially in a market when you can just go to the next trashy book on the shelf.

Jack Off

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 10:46:35 -0500

what pisses me off is she's like "I unconsciously did it tee hee". Yeah, right. How do you "unconsciously" copy many, many, many passages almost verbatim and then switch around the wording and cut and paste thesaurus similes? Total Fabrication. She knew what she was doing. This is a sham. that's why I only read the classics

Em

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 10:36:42 -0500

At least Oprah won't have to chew her out on national TV.

Oh Yeah

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 10:31:11 -0500

I would be really surprised (and disappointed) if Harvard doesn't even make her "take time off" for pulling this shit. At my school, if you knowingly lie on your resume and career services sees it you are violating the honor code. I'm not sure what happens in this case, but I think that Harvard may need to step in for some "character building".

JESUS CHRIST

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 10:18:31 -0500

wait this chick is smart enough to get into Harvard right? so she must know what plagiarism means. what the fuck is this "internalize"? If it walks like a duck.... and Jessica Darling is a pornstar.

Jen

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 10:13:10 -0500

I totally use schadenfreude - I saw Avenue Q!

mickster

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 10:11:04 -0500

So these are the types of books my wife has been reading all these years (before and after I knew her).... I think the Harvard chick (yes I meant to write that) totally did a search and replace in Word... Pretty sleazy...

stickwithcamus

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 10:05:49 -0500

Even more nefarious - was this planned? I mean after all the hoopla over Jim Frey's novel, that piece of crap is still on the best seller's list. Is this the new marketing tool for books? I for one have reverted to reading older classics. Who to trust?

famdoc

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 09:46:09 -0500

Excusing plagarism because it takes place in a less-than-Nobel-Prize-winning category, such as chick lit is a slippery slope argument. What makes me unhappy is the attitude that "if I can get away with it and make half-a-mil, then it is acceptable." It's happening more and more...not just chick lit, but scholarly work, such as the recent admission by Doris Kearns Goodwin that she lifted paragraphs from other people's writing. I feel bad for this young lady, but not too bad. I'm not in publishing, but I am relatively confident her contract included stipulations that her work is her own. She should have paused at the moment she put pen to paper and recalled her "internalization" of another's work.

Karen

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 09:34:24 -0500

haha...homeopt.. big ups! anyhow, i don't see what all the hoopla is about. big deal, a few similar lines or paragraphs taken from some no name author. what does this all mean, that she is not "genuinely talented"?... gimme a break, this is chick lit after all.

S.D.

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 09:29:15 -0500

I imagine this might threaten her place in Harvard. Love the Excuse. "Internalize"? Um, Okkkkk....

homeopt

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 09:25:59 -0500

Hey Jen, do you normally use schadenfreude in oral communication? I'm talking about normal conversation with friends, not the poseur talk at a bar or lounge when you're trying to impress the hipsters you don't know.

Lois Lane

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 09:25:45 -0500

Sorry for commenting on this blurb when what I really want to ask about is unrelated, but here goes. Is the Peter Davis who is mentioned on Page Six today the same Peter Davis who studied literature at Bennington and graduated in 1994 -- just like Jared Paul Stern? If this is the same Peter Davis who wrote for Paper Magazine, he is the same Peter Davis who went to school with Jared, which really gets you wondering about what was going in the literature department of Bennington in the mid-90s.