Internalizing vs Plagiarizing!!!
A few hours ago i was having a chat session with one of my professors on this current controersial issue of Kaavya The Harvard student!!! I noticed his status on Google Talk as "Hail Kaavya" n buzzed him to know more...And he infact was very strong on the point that what Kaavya did was not actually wrong! This spurred me to write down my views on this...
Chennai-born Kaavya Viswanathan, a sophomore at Harvard, has been accused of plagiarising upward of 30 passages from two books by author Megan McCafferty, "Sloppy Firsts" and "Second Helpings". Her book "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life" received a much-publicised $500,000 advance, has apologised for the similarities, saying they may have crept into her book "unintentionally and unconsciously".
Vishwanathan added a strange and to date most unique twist to authors rationalising liberal lifting of other's work as their own: 'I wasn't aware of how much I may have internalised Ms. McCafferty's words...
All credit for originality should go to Vishwanathan for this excuse. By feigning ignorance of how original source material influenced her eventual product, she is definitely being honest. Most artists of any sort have experienced that unconscious moment when the styles and voices of their creative ancestors speak through them. It is a humbling experience and affords the unwitting plagiarist time to reflect and re-shape their creative direction. Those of us who toil in the creative arts, internalise all our inspiration at every moment, unabashedly and without reservation. It takes perspective and wisdom to completely distil these influences from our finished products.
Writers -- fiction or journalists -- are nothing if they do not have a distinctive voice. Faulkner reads like Faulkner. Russell Baker could not be duplicated when he wrote for The New York Times. A would-be novelist without the creativity to create is nothing but a skilled typist. Kaavya may have great talent. She got into Harvard, didn't she? She may have been led down the garden path out of Eden and into the cold, horrible world of six-figure movie deals. I don't know, and I don't care.
Chennai-born Kaavya Viswanathan, a sophomore at Harvard, has been accused of plagiarising upward of 30 passages from two books by author Megan McCafferty, "Sloppy Firsts" and "Second Helpings". Her book "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life" received a much-publicised $500,000 advance, has apologised for the similarities, saying they may have crept into her book "unintentionally and unconsciously".
Vishwanathan added a strange and to date most unique twist to authors rationalising liberal lifting of other's work as their own: 'I wasn't aware of how much I may have internalised Ms. McCafferty's words...
All credit for originality should go to Vishwanathan for this excuse. By feigning ignorance of how original source material influenced her eventual product, she is definitely being honest. Most artists of any sort have experienced that unconscious moment when the styles and voices of their creative ancestors speak through them. It is a humbling experience and affords the unwitting plagiarist time to reflect and re-shape their creative direction. Those of us who toil in the creative arts, internalise all our inspiration at every moment, unabashedly and without reservation. It takes perspective and wisdom to completely distil these influences from our finished products.
Writers -- fiction or journalists -- are nothing if they do not have a distinctive voice. Faulkner reads like Faulkner. Russell Baker could not be duplicated when he wrote for The New York Times. A would-be novelist without the creativity to create is nothing but a skilled typist. Kaavya may have great talent. She got into Harvard, didn't she? She may have been led down the garden path out of Eden and into the cold, horrible world of six-figure movie deals. I don't know, and I don't care.
Language is what separates humans from cable television talk show hosts. It is not to be treated casually. We all internalize what we read and hear. There are books that inspire us and spur creative ideas. But it is an implausible plot line that Viswanathan is spinning. A sentence or a single situation -- maybe a writer does not realize where the idea came from. But dozens and dozens of similar situations cannot be mere chance.
Factual errors can -- and do – happen, but they cannot happen often if you expect to remain employed. More than continued employment and paychecks, journalists care about getting it right. There is no victory in a front-page story riddled with errors. But there is a lower level in hell for the plagiarist than for the "fictional" news writer.Getting it wrong is unacceptable; getting it from someone else is unpardonable.
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