Further news of Kaavya Viswanathan: Opal Mehta contract nullified

I was very interested to read the responses to my last assessment of Harvard author Kaavya Viswanathan's embroilment in plagiarism.  It seems as though many people are not of the opinion that borrowing ideas and entire passages from a series of different works constitutes a breach of intellectual property law.  Those people may be interested to know that, according to the Boston Globe, new signs of plagiarism recently appeared, and readers have cited passages that have been borrowed from even more works, including the nationally famous book The Princess Diaries.

According to the story in the Globe:  "In pulling the book last Thursday, Little, Brown announced it intended to relaunch the book at a future date, purged of the similarities to the McCafferty book. But publishing lawyers yesterday said that, in light of the new revelations, the publisher had to back away from Viswanathan altogether."  So it seems as though the book will not reach the levels of success that it was supposed it would, which, in a way, is justified.

From a purely market-based standpoint (nevermind the idea of artistic purity, which is much more personal and "up for debate"), a well-written novel with good ideas, pacing, and imagery will do better in the marketplace than a poorly written novel with a similar plot.  When an author publishes a book that is successful, and another author publishes a similar book that steals some of the ideas that made the original book popular, it harms the original author creatively and financially.

Although The Princess Diaries is not, according to sources, the most borrowed-from work in Viswanathan's novel, there are some striking similarities (from a link on the Boston Globe):

''The Princess Diaries," p. 129:

Well, I for one will not stand for it. There isn't a single inch of me that hasn't been pinched, cut, filed, painted, sloughed, blown dry, moisturized. I even have fingernails.

But I am not happy . . . Because I don't look a thing like Mia Thermopolis. Mia Thermopolis never had fingernails. . . . Mia Thermopolis never wore makeup or Gucci shoes or Chanel shirts or Christian Dior bras. I don't even know who I am anymore . . . She's turning me into someone else.

''Opal Mehta," p. 59

Every inch of me had been cut, filed, steamed, exfoliated, polished, painted, or moisturized. I didn't look a thing like Opal Mehta. Opal Mehta didn't own five pairs of shoes so expensive they could have been traded in for a small sailboat. She didn't wear makeup or Manolo Blahniks or Chanel sunglasses or Habitual jeans or La Perla bras . . . I was turning into someone else.

If the rest of the novel is as "cut and paste" as this passage would seem to indicate, then I can't see that it merits being published.  By the same token, however, I don't think that young Ms. Viswanathan is at all stupid.  She has still allegedly managed to craft a novel from all of the best pieces of other novels, which, in a way, is an art form in and of itself.  But, at the same time, there is not currently a place for such works in the publishing marketplace, which asks little from its authors except for originality.