On absolving plagiarism
In the 1930s in England, there were a bunch of authors, who wrote rather well. WH Auden, Christopher Isherwood and Stephen Spender. I can vouch for Auden, but I havent read more than one work by Isherwood or Spender. In 1951, Stephen Spender wrote his autobiography, “World within World”. In 1993, David Leavitt, a young American author, wrote a book called “While England Sleeps” which Spender claimed, closely derives in “Plot” from his autobiography. He filed a plagiarism suit on Leavitt, forcing him to change parts of his book (The plot itself?).
Leavitt argued in a piece called “Did I plagiarize his life” that plagiarism of a life is not an issue at all. Spender laughed at this idea in a subsequent piece, “My life is mine: It is not David Leavitt´s”
Now this same David Leavitt has gone and written a book on Srinivasa Ramanujan and Hardy in a book called The Indian Clerk. This time, before using Ramanujan´s life for his novel, he must have checked that neither Hardy nor Ramanujan were alive, nor had any living descendants.
I wonder if we scream at plagiarism only if it is committed by young Harvard undergraduates of Indian origin. Maybe we are so grateful to an American author for choosing an Indian topic, that we automatically bless him with glowing reviews, without digging a little deep into his history. Maybe Kaavya can write something fifteen years later and expect glowing reviews as well in America?
February 27th, 2008 at 9:44 am
What a coincidence!! only today was i struggling to recollect the indian author who was charged with plagiarism—Kaavya Viswanathan!!
February 27th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
You should also write about the hatred the sepia mutiny fellows have for her.
February 27th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
Plagiarized or not, Kaavya’s book was not worth reading. Boring.
February 28th, 2008 at 12:09 am
Avataram - I see that you take objection to my giving *The Indian Clerk* “a glowing review” without attending to this plagiarism charge in Leavitt’s past. Although I know about the Spender episode, I don’t see how that and this book are related in anything but the flimsiest way. To judge a novel in 2008 on the basis of some contentious episode in the writer’s life in the mid-nineties would be to deny that a work of art is in any way autonomous of its creator, or that it is worthy of being judged on its own merits (especially when it does indeed have such merit).
I am not, as you seem to suggest, “grateful to an American author for choosing an Indian topic”, only grateful to an American author for writing an exceptionally good and rich novel. I also find it hard to imagine how Leavitt could have cross-checked that neither Ramanujan or Hardy “had any living descendants” who might contest his interpretation.
February 28th, 2008 at 12:18 am
What is this? A court of law? Vanthuttan, vaathada.
February 28th, 2008 at 1:44 am
avataram is boring to death.
TON thevalam
February 28th, 2008 at 2:11 am
All I am pointing out is that you are willing to forgive a known plagiarist, who writes a novel based on two great mathematicians without knowing any mathematics, only to rewrite their biographies and put in incidents of gay sex, so that academic departments in the west, infested with sympathetic people will call this a seminal work (pun intended). Where you see a rich novel, I see only pornography, sullying the memory of two great mathematicians – Hardy and Ramanujan.
My point is that Kaavya did not claim to write any great work based on mathematics or mathematicians, she writes just chick-lit. When she writes a new novel, 15 years later, show her the same generosity, and make the same arguments you are making now.
February 28th, 2008 at 5:02 am
superbly put, Avataram.
February 28th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
My point is that Kaavya did not claim to write any great work based on mathematics or mathematicians, she writes just chick-lit. When she writes a new novel, 15 years later, show her the same generosity, and make the same arguments you are making now.
Chandrahas, if you don’t give the new Kaavya novel a glowing review in 2023, there will be hell to pay!
February 28th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Hahahaha. Maybe that kaavya point is moronic. But it is sad that Chandrahas, who knows all about good literature (Borges, Cavafy, Machado, Pamuk, Hikmet) should write a review praising pornography. Maybe this is what happens when your book is about to be published and your publishers lean on you to praise bad books they want to market.
February 28th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
So Avataram, it is not at all likely that as Chandrahas says, it is possible to view a work of art as autonomous of its plagiarising creator? Worthy of being judged on its own merits? That what you view as pornography might be viewed by him as a legitimate and tasteful work of modern literature?
So the only way you can make sense of this disagreement (or cognitive dissonance given you seem to have largely agreed with his reviews in the past) between his “opinion” and your “opinion”(which derives probably from a better knowledge of mathematics in general and Ramanujan and Hardy in particular) is to attribute some ulterior motives to what he wrote? To irresponsibly speculate that it might have to do with some back-door machinations engineered by publishers?
Maybe it is because I am not yet old enough to possess as much cynicism as you, or maybe it is because I know Chandrahas personally and find such an insinuation ridiculous beyond imagination, but what you implied in your last comment is too low even by TheMaanga standards.
February 28th, 2008 at 10:59 pm
Whatever you think of Chandrahas, he is no Hardy or Ramanujan. Ramanujan left no biography and Hardy left “A mathematicians apology” which Greene has called “The greatest description of what it means to be a creative artist”. A book that attempts to explore the sex life of these mathematicians without exploring their mathematics is pornography to me. Maybe it is nothing to you. Maybe your sympathies and Chandrahas’s lie with the people perpetrating this nonsense on the memory of two great mathematicians than with mathematics itself.
February 28th, 2008 at 11:31 pm
Chandrahas (what kind of a name is that?) thinks this a court and this Sabnis boy thinks this is satta sabai. Thaangalai.
February 28th, 2008 at 11:40 pm
True. I should have let it go with your first comment. Old age…
But the funniest is Amardeep Singh of Sepia Mutiny contributor praising this book, and getting a comment that parts of this book were “paraphrased” from Kanigels book.
http://www.lehigh.edu/~amsp/2007/08/new-novel-about-ramanujan-indian-clerk.html
Considering the indignation this guy had over copied chick-lit, we now know what north indian men actually read.
February 29th, 2008 at 4:42 am
Avataram, missing the point quite astronomically, aren’t you? I have not read the book, and have no opinion about it one way or the other. If you think it is pornography, so be it. Maybe it is. You could just call Chandrahas’s taste bad. You could, like you have done in the last comment, blamed it on his being North Indian. Or the fact that he likes wearing jeans.
But the whole publisher-pressure thing was pathetic. If it weren’t a friend of mine in question I would have just smiled at the side-effects of an old fart’s frustrations at not being able to get anything his way in life, much like Bal Thackeray’s railing against Valentine’s Day. Instead I felt compelled to stick up for him.
February 29th, 2008 at 4:52 am
Yay! The glory days of Gauravan are back!
February 29th, 2008 at 5:11 am
Enjoy them while they last
February 29th, 2008 at 5:17 am
neenga don’t worry — every drop will be had.
October 13th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
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