Tuesday, April 25, 2024
Viswanathan: The Story Gets Weirder
One of the most curious aspects of the story of Kaavya Viswanathan is the role of a company called Alloy Entertainment, which helped create the book Viswanathan is rumored to have written.
According to the Boston Globe, Viswanathan turned to Alloy when her original idea for a novel was considered "too dark."
While Viswanathan said the plot was her idea, she acknowledged in a February interview with the Globe that Alloy had played a major role in fleshing out the concept.
Alloy co-holds the copyright to "Opal Mehta...", which strikes some people the Globe interviewed as hard to explain if the company's role was only "fleshing out the concept."
''We would never recommend to an author that they share copyright for something as minor as refining a concept," said Boston-area literary agent Doe Coover.
I am curious: What is Alloy Entertainment? Its website, linked to above, describes the company as "a creative think tank that develops and produces original books, television series and feature films."
And how's this for a line to send Orwellian shivers down your spine: "Alloy Entertainment produces more than 40 new books a year."
What's really interesting is that Alloy Entertainment turns out to be essentially a subsidiary of a marketing company. This isn't really even some bogus ghostwriting firm; it's "one of the largest and most successful marketers and merchandisers to the youth market." The company's CEO, Matthew C. Diamond, "founded Alloy in January 1997 to tap into the enormous spending power of the Generation Y market."
What becomes clear is that that Kaavya Viswanathan's book really isn't a book at all; it's a piece of marketing aimed at the Generation Y market, a product, and Viswanathan—how much of this did she really write, even excluding the plagiarism?—may be little more than an empty vessel. Young, attractive, a Harvard student, and a member of a successful ethnic group, Indian-Americans (imagine the foreign rights!), she's a marketer's dream...so who cares whether she can write? It's not just her book that's product—it's Viswanathan herself.
After all, why else would you sign an 18-year-old to a two-book, $500,000 deal—when she hasn't even written a book yet?
The answer is, you don't—unless it's not her literary talents that you're buying.
In fact, one of the more intriguing possibilities of this story is that Viswanathan might not even have committed the plagiarism....but that it was the ghostwriters at Alloy Entertainment.
Whew. This is a tawdry business.
(Chitose Suzuki/ Associated Press)
Kaavya Viswanathan:
Did she plagiarize—
or was it her ghostwriters?
According to the Boston Globe, Viswanathan turned to Alloy when her original idea for a novel was considered "too dark."
While Viswanathan said the plot was her idea, she acknowledged in a February interview with the Globe that Alloy had played a major role in fleshing out the concept.
Alloy co-holds the copyright to "Opal Mehta...", which strikes some people the Globe interviewed as hard to explain if the company's role was only "fleshing out the concept."
''We would never recommend to an author that they share copyright for something as minor as refining a concept," said Boston-area literary agent Doe Coover.
I am curious: What is Alloy Entertainment? Its website, linked to above, describes the company as "a creative think tank that develops and produces original books, television series and feature films."
And how's this for a line to send Orwellian shivers down your spine: "Alloy Entertainment produces more than 40 new books a year."
What's really interesting is that Alloy Entertainment turns out to be essentially a subsidiary of a marketing company. This isn't really even some bogus ghostwriting firm; it's "one of the largest and most successful marketers and merchandisers to the youth market." The company's CEO, Matthew C. Diamond, "founded Alloy in January 1997 to tap into the enormous spending power of the Generation Y market."
What becomes clear is that that Kaavya Viswanathan's book really isn't a book at all; it's a piece of marketing aimed at the Generation Y market, a product, and Viswanathan—how much of this did she really write, even excluding the plagiarism?—may be little more than an empty vessel. Young, attractive, a Harvard student, and a member of a successful ethnic group, Indian-Americans (imagine the foreign rights!), she's a marketer's dream...so who cares whether she can write? It's not just her book that's product—it's Viswanathan herself.
After all, why else would you sign an 18-year-old to a two-book, $500,000 deal—when she hasn't even written a book yet?
The answer is, you don't—unless it's not her literary talents that you're buying.
In fact, one of the more intriguing possibilities of this story is that Viswanathan might not even have committed the plagiarism....but that it was the ghostwriters at Alloy Entertainment.
Whew. This is a tawdry business.
(Chitose Suzuki/ Associated Press)
Kaavya Viswanathan:
Did she plagiarize—
or was it her ghostwriters?
Comments:
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Hi Richard,
Considering the enormous success of Zadie Smith in England, it's natural that someone would think of an american version. The only question is howcome it took so long! But, financially speaking, bravo to the company for seeing this opportunity and taking advantage of it. Pity the ghostwriters had to ruin it all...
Considering the enormous success of Zadie Smith in England, it's natural that someone would think of an american version. The only question is howcome it took so long! But, financially speaking, bravo to the company for seeing this opportunity and taking advantage of it. Pity the ghostwriters had to ruin it all...
there's not too much room anymore to blame her plagiarism on the ghostwriters. amid that baffling non-apology, the one thing she did cop to was copying the works herself. or do you think maybe it would be more embarassing to admit the extent to which a "packaging" firm played a hand in the writing?
i don't by any chance detect any envy here in monsieur blogger? would you perhaps like to be packaged yourself, ricardo?
Curious that Peter Mehegan on the front page of the Globe (http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2006/04/25/after_duplicated_words_words_of_apology/) chose one arguable example, but nowhere gave any of the numerous absolutely irrefutable examples available in David Zhou's Crimson article:
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=512965
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=512965
Hi Richard,
Are newspapers now plagiarizing from your blog ;)
"Although there has been no suggestion that the actual writing was done by anyone other than Viswanathan, it is highly unusual for fiction to be packaged in this way - suggesting that the author was regarded as a marketing opportunity as much as a writer."
From the Independent story on this found here:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article360214.ece
Are newspapers now plagiarizing from your blog ;)
"Although there has been no suggestion that the actual writing was done by anyone other than Viswanathan, it is highly unusual for fiction to be packaged in this way - suggesting that the author was regarded as a marketing opportunity as much as a writer."
From the Independent story on this found here:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article360214.ece
I think that yes, it might be even more embarrassing to admit that her ghostwriters plagiarized—and damaging. Because at least now, she is thought to have written *some*, if not most, of her book. Take even that away from her, and what's left? She'd be a total fraud, rather than just a partial one.
Yes, I agree. But the thought that that $500,000 was for buying her IMAGE, as opposed to her writing talent, really makes everything fall into place.
Once one thinks about it a bit, it even becomes shocking to think otherwise.
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Once one thinks about it a bit, it even becomes shocking to think otherwise.
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