A fascinating (if troubling) piece from the Providence Journal. Excerpt:

Kaavya Viswanathan is the daughter of two New Jersey doctors who sent her to a competitive private high school. She was a good student, and apparently a good young writer. But was she good enough to get into Harvard on her own? To get a book published on her own?

Perhaps. But in each case, she had a whole lot of help. She had help from a new phenomenon that might be referred to as “packaging agencies.”…

Her parents hired an outfit called IvyWise to help get their daughter into a top college. It’s headed by Katherine Cohen, who graduated from Brown University in 1989, and is one of the most successful college consultants out there. The New York Times says she charges $33,000 for two years of consulting … The agency does far more than help kids with applications. It structures their whole lives — for years — to enhance their chances … I checked the IvyWise Web site, and learned they … even offer help for nursery-school applicants.

So Kaavya wasn’t just another “student” applying to Harvard. She was an elaborately packaged “pitch.”

And her book?…[Cohen's] agent apparently felt [Kaavya's writings] unworthy of a publisher, so guess where she sent them? To a book packager … This one is called Alloy Entertainment, and it develops concepts for teen-girl audiences. Alloy reportedly deemed Kaavya’s “novel-in-progress” too dark, so they spun it to reflect her own life. Even Alloy’s president has been quoted as saying his firm “helped Kaavya conceptualize and plot the book.”

It ended up being called “How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life,” and is about an Indian-American daughter of two New Jersey doctors who together do whatever it takes to get her into Harvard.

Is it any wonder that Kaavya resorted to plagiarism when everything but the writing of the book was done for her?

Sometimes our profession — and its variants — make us throw up a little bit in our mouths.

Technorati tags: Spin