Charles Drummond, in an opinion column in The Crimson, notes that Kaavya Viswanathan is hardly the first author in history to create "derivative" work. I'd also note that she isn't exactly the first person in Harvard's history to do something less than ethical. conradina had an interesting post on Lawrence Summers' creative approach to managing a research grant. This guy wasn't a 19-year-old undergrad; he was the university president. And we're talking about a grant in excess of $100 million, rather than a $500000 book advance. But that didn't get nearly as much media attention as Viswanathan's chick lit plagiarism.

On a much smaller scale, I found it ironic that a former instructor made a public post on a high-traffic website about Viswanathan's grades in her class. Given laws about student privacy, that seems questionable at best. So I'm not saying that what Viswanathan did was OK, but I wonder to what extent she reflects her surroundings.

See also:
http://conradina.livejournal.com/39395.html
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=507162
http://www.economicprincipals.com/issues/05.05.01.html
http://chronicle.com/daily/2005/12/2005120101j.htm