I'm Cute, I'm Fun, Wanna Give Me a Book Deal So I Can Get Into a PhD Program?

With the New York Times as my startup page, I couldn't help but click through to follow the scandal about 19-year-old Harvard sophomore Kaavya Viswanathan's plagiarized novel. I am trying to honestly dissect the many levels on which I am disturbed by this particular current event. It's easy to just say, "Whatever. Sour grapes and jealousy." But it's more complicated than that.

While I wasn't Harvard material (though, if my parents had hired a $20,000 applications counselor, who can say?), I certainly was Ivy material as a high school student, with a solid 1430 SAT, A's across the board, and diverse extracurriculars. I suppose, though it stings to admit it, there is still some part of me that longs for that kind of academic prestige. I got into higher-ranked schools than St. Lawrence, but my parents explained that the price tag was too high, the $2,000 or $3,000 scholarships offered too small, and I should think seriously about taking on that kind of debt. So it really does kind of hurt that some people are just handed everything. Shit, would I have finished law school and gotten a superfluous J.D., even though I hated it, if daddy was paying? I honestly might have.

But I think the part of this whole scandal that resonates with me the most is summed up fairly well by this student editorial in the Harvard Crimson.

It’s hard to disagree with this assessment: whoever was responsible for the unfortunate (let’s be honest, uncanny) parallels between Viswanathan’s novel and the work of Megan F. McCafferty, artistic ambition had less to do with this project than dreams of big cash. What is most disheartening for me is what happened before the scandal hit the presses: In fact, I think the real transgression here is the corporate project masquerading as an artistic endeavor.

This book deal had once seemed like a charming accident: “I had only vaguely thought of becoming a writer,” Viswanathan told the New York Sun just over a year ago, claiming she wanted to be an investment banker.

So perhaps, in the end, it is as a writer that I am offended, not as a bitter former smart kid with failed elitist leanings. I know it's a business. I am not deluded enough to assume it isn't. I mean, are writers (and I include myself in this group; I am as yet unpublished, but I take my writing seriously) this insulated snooty pack of elitists themselves, looking down on people who write because their schmuck college consultant had a contact with a book packaging company and thought it might look good on an admissions application? Well, in a word, yes. "Book packaging?" When I'm sitting here editing my manuscript for the agent search this summer, and everything I've read insists that the rules are important, that you must send out at least 50 query letters, that you must have a completed work before you query? To read about other authors being "recruited" to write simply as a gimmick is demoralizing, and I don't blame anyone with talent who feels this way. (Ugh. I just assigned myself talent. Elitism rears its head, and I dutifully try to quash it.)

But seriously, I got out of the law field because I wanted to pursue creativity, and now they're paying huge advances for teenaged aspiring investment bankers to write novels? I think what I'm trying to convey is that creative people like to surround themselves with other creative people, to seek out a lifestyle and a community. And when other people-- who are inexplicably being paid big money to write-- aren't interested in writing as an art and as a lifestyle, it sort of thwarts that, doesn't it? It's disappointing and disingenuous. What if this girl really did have talent? Surely being contracted to push out a book her freshman year of college isn't going to help her develop it.

Do I wish I had a book deal at 17? Absolutely. But I remember being 17, and realizing that I hadn't had enough practice yet to write something big-- to write in a way that would fulfill the vision in my head-- and knowing it was OK to wait. Also, I had an innate sense of fairness that was in place even then, and that would never have let me plagiarize.

Are these poor justifications for my annoyance? 'Cause if anyone wants to join me in forming Bitter Snobs Anonymous, I'm ready to go.

Tags: publishing, books, writing, Kaavya Viswanathan