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Chapter 15 – Section 2
Types of Law
FEMALE SPEAKER: At Harvard, the tale of Kaavya Viswanathan is legendary, a sophomore who wrote a novel and secured a half million dollar book deal. This month her book about a young woman who turns her life upside down to get into college became a best seller.
FEMALE SPEAKER: I just like to write, so doing this was very natural, it wasn’t really a planned thing.
FEMALE SPEAKER: But now there is a plot twist no one expected, reports that parts of Viswanathan’s book bare striking resemblances to a 2001 book by Megan McCafferty, and as many as 40 similar passages. Page six, this passage from McCafferty’s book is nearly identical to Viswanathan’s, page thirty nine, just flip the last two words. Page twenty three, characters names changed, but the rest of a fourteen word passage from McCafferty’s book appears verbatim in Viswanathan’s book.
FEMALE SPEAKER: Whether she did it on purpose, whether it was inadvertent or whether it was just a coincidence I can't say, but it really does look pretty weird.
FEMALE SPEAKER: Viswanathan says she was surprised and upset to learn that there are similarities, calling them unintentional and unconscious. As a huge of fan of MacCafferty, she says, she wasn’t aware of how much she may have internalized Miss. MacCafferty’s words.
FEMALE SPEAKER: But the war over whose words are whose is getting uglier, MacCafferty’s publishers have now issued their own statement, calling Viswanathan’s explanation, disingenuous and an act of literary identity theft.
FEMALE SPEAKER: The young author’s book has already been optioned by DreamWorks. It’s unclear whether or not they’ll actually make the movie, but Hollywood should pay attention to the ending because in this case fact is really better then fiction.
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