Will This Become Another “Poor Me” Story?

Alex Beam isn’t cutting Kaavya Viswanathan any slack for her alleged plagiarism, and points out that she didn’t exactly “write” her own novel in the traditional sense, anyway. “[She] bought her way into Harvard — her parents paid $10,000 to $20,000 to IvyWise, a college counseling service, according to The New York Times — then lucked her way into a $500,000 two-book contract with Little, Brown & Co. She shares the valuable copyright on her first novel with ‘book packager’ Alloy Entertainment, which helped flesh out the novel’s concept.” Beam wonders whether Viswanathan will be able to slough off the blame for the copying on some anonymous Alloy staffer.