Suzy Welch Explains KV
In
today's Wall Street Journal, Suzy Welch, wife of former General Electric CEO Jack Welch, does her best to explain Kaavya Viswanathan. "What went wrong with KV?" Welch asks.
She got kissed -- wooed, seduced, whatever -- by a publishing industry machine that craves content, moves fast, and depends on big hits. The days are gone when new writers could wrestle through draft after draft of a first manuscript, guided by a thoughtful (even challenging) editor. The business model of the publishing industry is about a small number of books selling lots and lots of copies. Kaavya got swept into that process, and, my guess is, was too young to fight its heady pull. Can you blame her? How many 18-year-olds do you know with the stuff to say, "No, please don't tell me I'm marvelous. Please don't make me rich and famous. I'd rather write carefully and suffer in obscurity."
Fair enough. But Welch loses me when she goes on to argue,
Am I saying then that Kaavya didn't intentionally plagiarize, as she claims? I am indeed. Every writer hungrily reads other books in his or her genre, as Kaavya did with Megan McCafferty. And every writer is, by nature, something of a mimic.
Oh, nonsense. While every writer may be influenced by the things that he or she has read, not every writer incorporates them verbatim into her work.
And here's another quibble: Would it be too much to ask Welch to acknowledge, however mildly, that she too has suffered the pains of literary scandal?
(Back in 2001, Welch, then known as Suzanne Wetlaufer,
was bedding Jack Welch, a married man, even as, in her position as editor of the Harvard Business Review, she was editing an interview with him.)
It's certainly relevant to know that Suzy Welch might have quite personal feelings about such traumatic events. (Living through scandal, not sleeping with Jack Welch. Though, maybe....)
