In what's sounding more and more like another, much better novel than Opal, the Kaavya Viswanathan scandal continues. Yesterday she sat down with the New York Times for a curious exercise in sweet disavowals (when she was published at 19, "I thought everyone was just being nice to me") combined with shrewd self-interest ("I've never read a novel with an Indian-American protagonist"). She continues to insist that that she had internalized McCafferty's writing. If Viswanathan had truly internalized it, no one would have noticed the theft.
Her bad faith aside, one wonders what Viswanathan's teenaged readers will think. A story about a studious and plucky Indian-American girl who scores a admittance to Harvard and a scruffy musician is one thing, but a story about an overachiever elbowing her way to the top of the preppy careerist set is quite another. Already Viswanathan's professors at Harvard are harrumphing about kicking her out.
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