It's an odd feeling when you read your own words under someone else's byline. At first, it's simply deja vu: haven't you seen this somewhere before? Definitely - but where? Is it a syndicated column that's already been published elsewhere? No. Hang on. Didn't I write it? A few seconds later, Google confirms it. And then: of all the stuff I've written, you nick this? It was almost embarrassing. Reporting it to the offender's editor would have been like complaining to the police that a neighbour had taken a shovelful from my compost heap. Still, after checking with a couple of friends that the similarity was too great to have been coincidental, I emailed the journalist responsible.
The reply was prompt and aghast. He'd been unwell lately. He was appalled at the idea that he might have plagiarised someone else's article. He had read the article, admired it and could only imagine that, somehow, the phrases had sunk into his memory and unconsciously turned up in his piece.
Right now, Kaavya Viswanathan probably feels much the same. Here's what the 19-year-old Harvard student and author of How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life - the story of a girl who embarks on an orgy of frivolity after Harvard deems her application too perfectly worthy - responded to allegations that parts of her novel were similar to sections of two novels by Megan F. McCafferty:
"While the central stories of my book and hers are completely different, I wasn't aware of how much I may have internalised Ms McCafferty's words. I am a huge fan of her work and can honestly say that any phrasing similarities between her works and mine were completely unintentional and unconscious. My publisher and I plan to revise my novel for future printings to eliminate any inappropriate similarities."
Cryptomnesia, which is the medical term for this kind of thing, is a powerful defence against charges of plagiarism. Rightly, copying material out of someone else's book, or lifting it from the internet, is deemed a much worse offence than regurgitating it. The former can get you expelled from university; the latter can get you an upper second. Still, as internalisations go, Viswanathan's are not the kind you'd hope your unconscious is brimming with. By most accounts, this is a sweet, funny, harmless novel. But the phrases she allegedly lifted are pretty unedifying.
"Moneypenny was the brainy female character. Yet another example of how every girl had to be one or the other: smart or pretty. ... Five department stores, and 170 specialty shops later ... Sean stood up and stepped toward me, ostensibly to show me the book. He was definitely invading my personal space, as I had learned in a Human Evolution class last summer ... " (You learnt what in a Human Evolution class? No wonder creationism is taking off in America.) "I was sick of listening to her hum along to Alicia Keys, and worn out from resisting her efforts to buy me a pink tube top emblazoned with a glittery Playboy bunny."
Harvard should be worried. Not so much about the plagiarism - that will be very hard to prove - but about the junk swimming around in their star undergraduates' brains. Fortunately for Viswanathan, there is nothing in her internalisings or borrowings that might undermine her ambition to become an investment banker. On the contrary: her proven ability to borrow other people's property and make more money out of it suggests she will do very well indeed.
