Plagiarism is no laughing matter. If you are found guilty of doing it, you can fail a class or be expelled from school. In the real world, the penalties are much stiffer. In 2003, a 27-year old New York Times reporter Jayson Blair lost his job after he admitted to copying other journalists' writing and faking reports. Another high-profile example is reporter Stephen Glass, once a rising star at The New Republic. Glass lost his job and became the black sheep of journalism. He was also the subject of the 2003 movie Shattered Glass.

This week, the person in the spotlight was Kaavya Viswanathan.

Last year, the sophomore at Harvard was given a $500,000 advance by the publishing giant Little, Brown to write a novel about an overachieving high school senior's attempts to get popular and gain admission to Harvard University. The book: How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life.

In February, I read an advance copy of the book with much interest. It's not everyday that a new "young literary genius" is discovered and publicized by a major publishing company. Kaavya was 17 when she got her book deal; she was the youngest author signed by Little, Brown in decades.

My friend and colleague Pooja read How Opal Mehta ... too. The following week, we got together for lunch and talked about it, dissecting it bit by bit. Literary tastes aside (there were a few things about the book that bothered us), we decided that any 19-year-old who could write a 250+ page novel deserved to be credited for her accomplishments. After reaching this conclusion, we sat back and waited for the book to come out--we were curious to know what others would think, whether our concerns would be mirrored by critics and readers, and whether the book would be as big a hit as the publisher had hoped for.

On April 1,  Kaavya Viswanathan's much-anticipated book came to life in bookstores. A flurry of reviews followed in all major newspapers and literary outfits. Then, things took an unexpected turn. The downward spiral began.

Neither Pooja nor I had expected this.

Last Sunday, the Harvard Crimson newspaper published a story alleging that Kaavya had plagiarized over 40 sections from two young adult novels by Megan McCafferty, Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings.

In an email she sent on Monday, Kaavya said that she had "internalized" McCafferty's work without realizing. That is, she had been such a fan of McCafferty's books since high school and had read them 3 or 4 times and had had copied her style without realizing. "Any phrasing similarities between her works and mine," Kaavya wrote, "were completely unintentional and unconscious."

Many were not convinced. Examples such as this one were cited:

Bridget is my age and lives across the street. For the first twelve years of my life, these qualifications were all I needed in a best friend. But that was before Bridget’s braces came off and her boyfriend Burke got on, before Hope and I met in our seventh grade Honors classes. 
   - McCafferty, Sloppy Firsts (Three Rivers, 2001), pg. 7

Priscilla was my age and lived two blocks away. For the first fifteen years of my life, those were the only qualifications I needed in a best friend. We had bonded over our mutual fascination with the abacus in a playgroup for gifted kids. But that was before freshman year, when Priscilla’s glasses came off, and the first in a long string of boyfriends came on.
   - Viswanathan, How Opal Mehta…Got a Life (Little, Brown, 2006), pg. 14

These conversations [with Marcus] are like a shot of Schnapps with a Tabasco sauce chaser. Short, sweet, and strange, as well as capable of making me hot, wobbly, and confused.
   - McCafferty, Sloppy Firsts (Three Rivers, 2001), page 218

Talking to Sean had been like eating sev mixture, the Indian equivalent to Chex Party Mix, sharp and sweet and spicy all at once, with every bite containing a new mixture of ingredients.
   - Viswanathan, How Opal Mehta…Got a Life (Little Brown, 2006), page 145

In fact, I read one document at Publisher's Weekly that cited 49 different examples. Some seemed a stretch and others were pretty compelling, like the above ones.

The plot thickens.

Tuesday: Kaavya's publisher issued a statement saying that they would reprint the book with revisions and an acknowledgement to McCafferty. 

Wednesday: Kaavya appeared on NBC's Today Show. “When I was writing, I genuinely believed each word was my own,” she said.

Later Wednesday: At an interview at her publisher's office, she also added some of the plagiarism may have happened because she "had a photographic memory." (See Slate.com for more on photographic memory.) She also admitted that she had help developing the plot from 17th Street Media Productions, a "book packager."

Thursday: Publisher Little, Brown essentially pulled the book off the shelves. They "sent a notice to retail and wholesale accounts asking them to stop selling copies of the book and to return unsold inventory to the publisher for full credit," said Michael Pietsch, senior vice president and publisher of Little, Brown. Read NYT article.

Is this the end of Kaavya's story? Has she had her 15-minutes of fame and will everyone forget about her by next Friday at this time? I'm not sure.

This controversy does not seem so black and white to me. Is Kaavya an intentional plagiarist or an unconscious copycat? What role did her editor(s) and the marketing company play in this story? And if she did sit down and cut and paste the alleged 49 sections, did she think it was OK because she was paraphrasing - i.e. rewriting another writer's words in her own words and changing the nouns, names, places, and things around?

As writers - whether we are writing for fun, for school, or for money - we all bear a mighty responsiblity to our readers and to ourselves. That responsibility is to select each word we use with precision and to do our utmost best to offer original thoughts and words to the world.

That task is not always easy - and in this respect, I empathize with Kaavya. There have been many occasions when I have written something and thought, "Hmmm, that sounds familiar. Did someone else say that?" As a writer, I need to be responsible for looking it up, investigating, poking around to see whether that is the case. If I find that yes, my words do sound a great deal like someone else's, I need to go back and delete and rewrite.

Of course, there are somethings that there just aren't too many ways of saying:

Her name was Lucy. She lived in a house.
She was named Lucy. In a house she lived.
Lucy was her name. She resided in a house.

If you rewrite something like that or state a fact that's widely known--"There are 12 months in a year" -- that's not plagiarism. Plagiarism is copying someone else's writing without noting the source. That's very different from being inspired by another writer and learning from his or her style. (I'll write about that another time!)

You see why this is so complicated? I'm still trying to wrap my brain around it. What I think we should take away from this is not a sense of glee ("Aha! Kaavya got caught. Serves her right!" I've been hearing a lot of that out there.) Rather, we should step away from this situation and use Kaavya's experience to remind us of the importance of consciously choosing our words. We should use it to remind ourselves that when it comes to writing, there's nothing better than writing in our own voices.

At the end of the day, when Kaavya's book has disappeared from bookshelves and her life has returned to a sense of normalcy, I hope that she will pick up a pen again and ask herself: What is my original writing voice? I wish her good luck in finding it. From what I've seen so far, it is a voice that glimmers with wit.

More:
Interested in one teacher's perspective? Go to Poynter.org
Want to know more about plagiarism? Download plagiarism.pdf (75.11 KB)