Caught with her fingers in the plagiarism cookie jar, Kaavya Viswanathan has promised to return the material she lifted from Megan McCafferty's Sloppy Firsts. In what sounds more like a PR agent after three lattes than an author caught nabbing virtually her entire first novel, Viswanathan says the borrowing was "unintentional and unconscious," in way that someone unintentionally and unconsciously steals a credit card. The PR agent, or Viswanathan, whichever, went on to say,
When I was in high school, I read and loved two wonderful novels by Megan McCafferty, Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings, which spoke to me in a way few other books did. Recently, I was very surprised and upset to learn that there are similarities between some passages in my novel and passages in these books.
Every author steals--Rutgers could have taught her that. It's all about the deftness of the theft. Now that she's known as a plagiarist, for her next book she should lift material from James Frey's A Million Little Pieces. She'll be famous forever, or maybe just for this week.
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