Harvard Student/Author in Hot Literary Water

While Bostonist constantly struggles to get you the latest news here in the city, we like to think that we’ve got our act together (somewhat)…that is until we read about someone much younger who has accomplished something that we some day hope to. Last week, we read an article from the A.P. Wire about a Harvard student, Kaavya Viswanathan, who at age 17, signed a two-book deal with publishing house Little, Brown for a reported $500,000. Her first book, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life, hit bookstores on April 4 and has been getting tons of positive press and climbing up the New York Times Bestsellers List. The book’s plot has the main character, Opal Mehta, getting rejected from Harvard despite her straight A record because she never took time to have a social life; so, Opal does just that and learns how to acclimate herself with the life of trendy teens.

There are a few similarities between the author, Viswanathan, who is now a sophomore at Harvard, and her literary alter ego, Opal; today the author is in some hot water due to similarities between her own book and two of Megan F. McCafferty’s novels, Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings. A fan of McCafferty’s work e-mailed her recently and pointed out some strong textual support of similarities between the books; McCafferty’s publisher, Random House, got involved and contacted the legal department of Little, Brown last week to inform them of the potential plagiarism problem.

We have all heard of books that are similar to other books already out there (isn't all "chick lit" basically the same plot?). Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, was in a heated legal battle earlier this month to see if the book’s plot was stolen from the 1982 book, Holy Blood, Holy Grail (the court ruled it was not). Yet, the Harvard Crimson paper goes into great depths by giving a side-by-side comparison of the text in question, and we must say that it isn’t looking too good for this Harvard sophomore and her writing career. Of course, you be the judge and let Bostonist know what you think.