I wish her luck as she sorts out her life and regains her grip on reality. Hopefully she'll trust her own instincts instead of going along with all those who would push her to meet their own needs.

I actually have a great deal of empathy for the poor young author. One theory of criticism believes that all fiction is converted to pictures in the brain (I'll never forget the example from thirty years ago, Faulkner saying "the bird gusted into the [tree]") So, I can imagine that some of the intense metaphors from earlier books she had read were engraved in her brain as pictures, and when she wanted to describe a similar situation the words just came out too close for comfort (really, most of our experiences are in common).

Also, I have written something, then later been reading a book and come across my exact phraseology. I know I did plagarize cuz I hadn't read the other book first. So . . .collective unconcious? Limited vocabulary in the English language? Who knows?

Well, this is off topic, but I hope the dog pile on this young author ends soon. I'm sure she's wrecked as it is.

Hey salon

how about doing an expose at how the publishing industry works - "first time geniuses" edited by the same handfull of people, book packagers who sell ideas/plots and entire books, and book buyers for large chains who only want fast selling stuff.

Kaavya bears responsibility for trading her integrity for the dollars and increasingly it seems for putting her name on the cover (I would too if it paid my Harvard fees for four years!) - but so have a lot of others. But do come clean and take on the people who put you in this place - yes, the agent, the publisher, the book packagers...all the publishing circus.

Frankly its the editors, publishers, agents and marketing whizzes who put together the book who should pay - after all for all her advances and contracts (which are shared with Alloy anyway), its the publishers who make the most money. They need someone to give them a bloody nose. And who better than someone who has been made the fall guy.

Kaavya - we know you can do the Indian-American success routine, can you now do the fifteen rounds? That too is an "Indian" trait.

Was that a freudian slip? I meant to say I knew I did NOT plagarize

Dishonesty is not a mistake. It's a way of being. Creative writing that does not come from the inside out is not worth a turd floating in the Ganges.

Trust me, Indian Americans do NOT have a monopoly on parental pressure. That's just a smug, racist assumption. I don't know if you were being sarcastic, but your implication that your race has some sort of genetic perfection genes (we all have photographic memories, no wonder we win all the spelling bees) was very off putting and would be called something derogatory had a Caucasian penned the article.

White and black upper middle class kids face just as much pressurue to succeed and grab that Ivy League pot of gold. No longer are well off kids of any color allowed to just play after school, wander around and explore the world on their own. All our kids could benefit from less pressure and more "downtime" and be taught that it's not the end of the world to make a mistake.

I have no sympathy for Kaavya. She's a thief who blatantly stole (from multiple books), denied it, then made up a phony excuse about "internalizing". I have a hard time believing that it's 2006, and NO Indian American has ever made news for breaking the law. You made it sound like Kaavya's disgrace was the first time this has happened to your people.

In the end, what the scandal taught me was that people of all races just have a hard time saying sorry and admitting they've royally screwed up. Regardless of their upbringing.

Macon

It's true; she knew exactly what she was doing and is not some innocent victim. However, she's certainly not the sole person responsible for this mess.

I'd love to see Kaavya have a nice long conversation with a journalist and bring all of them down with her. Who makes these publication decisions in the first place? Even without the plagiarism, the book was supposedly pretty mediocre. Can we have some standards now? Should I be holding my breath?

Peggy, here are some of the passages:

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=512948

I've done what you do too and I've plagiarized a concept or string of words by accident--usually I catch it-- but this was different. I do have empathy for her because when you were 17 did you know there could be ramifications heard 'round the world? Or that you could be on the Post James Frey Shit List for the rest of your life? (different situation, I realize) --probably not.

With gimmicks,(she's 17) come problems. She's a kid. She was too young to know she committed a serious error. I don't know how the editors detect plagiarism if they aren't aware of the plagiarized work in the first place, although you'd think those editors would know this genre, yes? But if a kid sends you her manuscript, heads up, you better conduct a question and answer to vet each page.

Moreover, there is a literary climate (and industry) that wants bigger,(not richer or better thought out, in fact shorter books, it seems), gimmicky-er, more stuff happening, more plots, a rabid fear of the glorious mundane, less good writing, more writers with their own stories and dramas that look good on the jacket, no matter how dubious. Hello, James Frey.

I think exposing the industry's pimps would be a more interesting article than this one and I apologize if Salon did a tie-in article that I missed during the Frey hoopla.

Ms. Viswanathan probably will make it through this alive. But with the shame heaped on her by every media outlet in the country, I wonder if she won't have some pretty serious emotional scars.

Of course it's partly her fault. But the grown-ups who hijacked her when she was a teen, convinced her to be an author, then kept her on deadline so she had to write 50 pp a week during finals at Harvard -- they deserve some blame too. Sure, she signed on the dotted line. But her parents and private college counselor and agent and extended family were right there behind her.

And no, it's not just Indian kids who crack under that kind of pressure.