Opal-Gate

Author, I like your style and, as parent of an almost-teenager who likes writing but finds it easier to plagiarize for school essays, I identify with a lot of what you say.
I disagree with you tho that writing novels is so hard that only a few people can do it. There`s tons of pulp fiction trash churned out for various market segments that one wonders if it is the sheer tedium of doing it that`s keeping everyone from trying one`s hands at writing a novel.
It could be that Kaavya sleep-walked into this whole episode. A teenager loves attention and glamor. An eager marketing company and willing parents complete the equation.
I wonder if at least the story line is original. It must be decent enough for dreamworks to buy the option.

Re: # 4
Raw_Dust my friend
You forgot the famous Indian American (Anglo Indian) , Merle Oberon. Born Queenie Thompson Merle O`Brien (Irish father Indian mother) I think, in Calcutta, worked as a secretary there, moved to Hollywood, acted with a lot of stars, ``Wuthering Heights`` with Lawrence Olivier, married Alexander Korda etc etc...

Don`t forget Jhumpa Lahiri if you count publishing novels as entertainment.

excellent writeup. i dont really care about the case, for me the whole thing was interesting to see how indian americans are making their presence known, ok here it was kinda bad publicity. But there is this underlying surge of desis (almost all of them indian americans) in the entertainment industry. Most famous is ofcourse, M Night Shyamalan then recently, i found out that Steve Martin`s film Shopgirl was actually produced by an indian american. Harold and Kumar goes to white castle, a flick about cliches has an indian stoner who could be goofy and ace his medical exams too. i thought that was a pretty f`kin cool cliche to get by in amreeka.


Has anyone read Siddharta Deb`s novel. It came out a few years ago and supposed to be good.


More power to all those creative people out there.

Its also that Kavya gets to keep 500, 000 of her advance, given to her on the strength of 10-20 pages....

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Nice writing and very true.

I have very little sympathy of Ms. Vishwanathan, she probably thought she was doing one of her homework assignments lifting from obscure journals.

I have even less sympathy for Megan McCafferty who according to her agent was so devastated that ``she couldn`t eat or sleep``. She shouldn`t be complaining. She got more publicity than her publishers could have got for her. She ought to split her loot with Ms. V in gratitude.

MsV. lifted from Rushdie`s Haroun and the sea of stories too. Probably thought few people would read that one in the US.