standard doubles

Music: Baby Huey and the Babysitters: Living Legend Teen lust novelist Kaavya Viswanathan was on The Today Show this morning with the mea culpa routine, trying to salvage her credibility after a plagiarism flap. Apparently her adolescent novella, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life lifts 40-something hunks, phrases, and turns of phrase from Megan McCafferty's teen novels. This morning the 19 year old endured the rage of Katie Couric, whose parade of "come on, girl, you know better" -style questions came off poorly. I thought the young woman was quite sincere. She said she was horrified when the lifts were brought to her attention, and that she didn't realize how deeply she had "internalized" McCafferty's words while wrestling with those hot teen hormones in highschool. Apprently Viswanathan had read and re-read the novels over and over as a teen and pre-teen (like I did with, um, Madelene L'Engle novels I guess . . . and, er, Ayn Rand).

I thought Viswanathan seemed contrite and honest; Couric closed the interview by comparing her to what's his face on Oprah, which was stupid. James Frey just flat out lied; I think this young woman probably did have unconscious memories and scripts percolating to the surface. To deny her honesty is to deny there is such a thing as the unconscious; indeed, it's to deny the truth of Joyce's literary genius, as well as the entire corpus of rock and roll music. Just this morning I was listening to Electric Light Orchestra's "Roll Over Beethoven" . . . a thoroughly unoriginal yet really fun string-infused, ten minute extension of the Chuck Berry tune. I've even read my own published work and recognized turns of phrase I've "internalized" from other authors ("soul-deep" is one of them; I realized after I'd written a few things and used the phrase that I internalized it from Ingebretsen's At Stake book).

That said, the ongoing saga with the webmaster of the page that plagiarizes sections from my book continues. As I reported last week, this webpage lifts, verbatim, large sections from my book. This ain't no "unconscious" internalizations floating to the e-surface; this is outright theft (I mean, who else would make up terms as stupid as "rhetorical antinomy" or "occult poetics" except my beer-addled brain circa 2000?). Anyhoo, I asked the webmaster to remove the page or credit my book. She responded that she'd never heard of the book, and to provide evidence of plagiarism. So I quoted one example, and then she responded that if I could locate a copy of Modern Occult Rhetoric in a library in Singapore, she would go take a look. I responded in a WTF tone: why is it my responsibility to locate the call number of my book in Singapore for her theft? Obviously, we're not just dealing with someone for whom English is a second language, but a "cultural" other . . . not to mention someone who is, um, crazy. My last missive:

Joshua Gunn wrote:

>>STEAL?

plagiarism = theft. Yes, this is also called stealing.

>>Why don't you go to the police then!

Apparently it's ok to steal in Singapore. As if I can specify a library and call number for you over there. You are rude and deliberately offensive.

>>In any case I won't open any of your nonsensical and abusive mails anymore, they will simple be deleted.

Nonsensical? What's nonsensical about your webpage citing, verbatim, passages from my book and my saying you shouldn't do that? It's simple ethics.

Ok, ok, there is some element of enjoyment in this. This person was easy to "set off," which is suggestive (of craziness!), to say the least. The last email I received from "Christine Wong" was yesterday morning. Somehow my telling her plagiarism is unethical means that I am now George W. Bush--the mighty cock of U.S. fascism. I reprint it here in its entirety for your and my enjoyment (feel free to email her to chime in if you want!):

Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2006 05:59:32 +0100 (BST) From: christine wong Subject: Re: Ethics and the disrespect for laws in other countries countries then your .

I have never in my life broken any laws anywhere. On the other hand for you to accuse me of such, is illegal not only in the country where I reside, but more important in your own jurisdiction.

Your obviously an egomaniac, convinced everybody has seen your book, as if you don't notice nobody as much as bothered to write a single review on amazon whereas you find many other books there that have a dozen reviews within a few days after a book is released. No, I have never seen your book and didn‚t know of its existence until you forced it on me with your verbally aggressive mails.

And no you cannot also not go around like a Rambo and demand other countries to change their laws only to fit your personal desires. Yet you seem to insist that you do have that right, this reminds of the old colonial attitude of rape and steel and murder as much as you like, because you have a entrenched conviction that are better then the rest of the world as far *they* have different customs as those you are used to in your private apartment.

As for your unbalanced style of logical deduction, why would I ever have lived in Singapore?

Also, you clearly work for money and I don't. Thus from a forensic point of view your misapplied motive and violent desire to force your will on other parts of the world, with different laws as your own, is deductible. Ad to this the above evidence that you are an egomaniac, the problem you have, rather seems comparable to that of those people who for example murdered millions of Jews during WWII (or and do this to any other population group or and country in the world today) and felt (feel) they did (do) something good. In other words, you don't even know how rude and unethical you are.

Hoping you did tell the truth about the press, and that this is not just another twist of your unethical and violent behavior, I request that you forward this my mail to them.

*And to the press who reads this, pls this is a good exercise to study the history of international law the way it developed and what the differences are today between various parts of the world as a whole and how it is applied in those various places. Mr.Gun as far this is concerned obviously is an uneducated brute, ignorant of any knowledge relating to the subject he nevertheless ventures into. My only motive is that I try to do something good for other people, and this can be dully proven in a court of law anywhere in the world. *

Also Mr.Gunn, *I kindly but urgently request, that you forward a copy of this correspondence to the ethics commission of your University network. I hereby request that someone with legal authority contact me at the same way assistant professor Gunn did, and explain why, members of your faculty are allowed to use the university net to send insulting mails to other countries, because of course your University as a legal entity in the US is liable in this case.*

Yours very sincerely,

Christine Wong

Presumably, Christine Wong.