So what I want to know is, does she get to keep the cash? Those $500,000 clams? Since it’s now been revealed that Kaavya lifted from not just two or three books but possibly over half a dozen, does her “book” even deserve to bear her name?

My first reaction to the scandal was that perhaps the press was just looking for another James Frey. So I went to the source and read the questionable passages for myself. I gotta say, the repeated changing of a few words in sentences does appear deliberate (you can throw off Google, girlfriend, but not people who actually read). And damn, there was so many:

Please! Pinching one or two phrases from another book in the course of writing a 320-page novel might be accidental. But by the time a novelist does it 29 times, the effort is transparently intentional and conscious. Unless, of course, Viswanathan composed her entire novel during Ambien-induced sleep-writing episodes.

[Jack Shafer, Slate]

Time Magazine agreed, titling their drubbing “An F for Originality.”

Personally, I think the main difference between her book and all the other chick-lit books is she simply skipped the chick-lit formula and took the even easier route of lifting directly. (Can you tell I hate chick-lit books?). In the end, though what Kaavya did is very lame, I blame the publishers for not doing their homework and being overzealous.

Some interesting reading over at the Harvard Crimson (the ones who originally uncovered everything).

I know the issue goes deeper than the plagiarism. There’s the issues about race, overachievers, overbearing parents and cultural divides. Which I don’t really have time to get into other than to say I went to high school with a number of these “overachiever” types and I think the same of them now as I did then–which is that however smart they might be academically, they were usually the dumbest people on the planet emotionally. Which meant they were dumb in the most important way. (Except people like Rashunda–she’s smart in every way).

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Have I mentioned lately how hot Stephen Colbert is? If you haven’t seen his performance at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, see it here (part 1 of 3). My favorite line from part 2: “…I am appalled to be surrounded by the liberal media that is DESTROYING America–with the exception of Fox News. Fox News gives you both sides of every story. The President’s side, and the Vice-President’s side.” Ha! That one was pretty obvious. Still, I have often wondered how many Republicans out there don’t even get that he’s roasting them alive on his regular show.

The other day my friend Teresa came over for our appointed Monthly Bitch Session™, and while we were chatting I was playing my discovery of the week, Matisyahu. I had scanned the LA Times to see all the things I missed at Coachella (I’ll get over it, promise), and I came across this reggae guy. I checked out some of his music and really liked it. The weird thing is, he’s not Jamaican or even black. He’s a Hasidic Jew. I had NO IDEA Hasidic reggae even existed. Anyway, it’s pretty interesting grooving to stuff about Jerusalem instead of blunts.

Technorati Tags: plagiarism, kaavya, Matisyahu, stephen colbert

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