What if my hero falls for a chorus girl?
"Sabrina was the brainy Angel. Yet another example of how every girl had to be one or the other: Pretty or smart."
"Moneypenny was the brainy female character. Yet another example of how every girl had to be one or the other: smart or pretty."
Okay, so it took an expose by her native student body publication, and Kaavya Viswanathan admits she nicked plenty of her bestselling Opal Mehta book (passage two) from a series of girlie books (passage one) by Megan McCafferty. More examples? Go here.
What's striking when you read about this kinda thing (besides the fact that the writing is awful and puerile and neither writer has any business being in print and it's alarming to think that these are bestsellers and that somebody would actually lift from McCafferty) is Kaavya's excuse.
She claims to have accidentally "internalised" Megan's novels, books she really connected to when she was younger.
Riiight.
I think all of us are constantly influenced. By the way a plot twist is set up, a narrative structure, the usage of Ray Chandler novel-titles as chapter headings, styles of description, et al. Heck, what's the point of a writer reading Swift or Nabakov or Joyce if not to learn from them? If we go back to the 'nothing is original' argument, I guess, Kaavya, we all internalise.
It's likely that my writing is, somewhere, going to always be a shadowed by the ghosts of (greater) words past. For all you know, I've flicked from Wodehouse inadvertently while writing my new comedy. It's extremely possible that I type up a monocle'd leading man who dodges crumpets at his club and avoids his aunts like the plague, but -- and here's the vital bit -- I think that's okay.
As long as I don't sit with a copy of Summer Lightning open next to me, picking up sentences and changing details to avoid being googled. As long as what I write is essentially mine, instead of the other way around. As long as I'm not writing about an Earl with a prize pig and star-crossed lovers in the backyard, without playing with either form or content to create something original. Influences are all very well -- isn't literature the most liberal art form in terms of plagiarism? aren't there millions of spin-offs and variations, spoofs and satires? almost everything is forgiven -- but when we rip something off, we betray both the book we're writing, and the writer inspiring enough to provoke mimicry.
This is a depressing news story, the kind that'll raise questions (for a while, anyway) about all young and striking debut novelists.
Kudos, however, to The Harvard Crimson for staunchly attacking one of their own -- though this is the kind of exposé that could well have stemmed from campus cattiness. Still, well done.
Teen prodigy my eye.