How Opal Mehta got caught cheating...

The latest brouhaha to hit the publishing world this week is the tale of Harvard student and teen writer Kaavya Viswanathan, whose recently published book How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life is the subject of accusations of plagiarism from Megan McCafferty's Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings. The story first broke in the Harvard Crimson, and spread quickly. GalleyCat does a good job of summarizing it, at least as of Tuesday. Since then, they've posted even more follow-ups (I got bored linking, but there's even more. Poke around yerself). Another site offers a handy pdf of the more than 40 passages being sited as proof, and Katie Couric got into it with the author this morning on the Today Show (click on "Teen author denies intentional copying"), and it seemed had the author on the verge of tears. Meg Cabot, one of my favorite bloggers and authors, also commented on her site, and I'm sure there's even more.

I had lunch with a friend, also in publishing, and we spent a good portion of our hour talking about this, and I've spoken with other folks in the biz, and no one -- NO ONE -- thinks Viswanathan did this "unconsciously." Where the matter seems to get a little more murky is whether 17th Street, the book's packager, may have contributed to the case, intentionally or no, or whether their editors are just another line of readers that missed the plagiarism.

It's all pretty fascinating, and despite comparisons to the Oprah/James Frey scandal, seems a lot more clear-cut, at least to me. Embellishing your life is one thing, copying someone else's quite another. And what I hate is the idea that, like the James Frey thing having an impact on memoir writers (hello, HtDaS! I haven't forgotten you!), this may negatively impact other authors who've worked in connection with 17th Street. Good authors, great authors, who sweated and toiled over every word of their original works, and may be tainted with the same brush as Viswanathan.

I hope not.