Clearly, there are people who are feeling pretty damned righteous about exposing her.  I don't care what motivates them or what justice they feel they set into motion - but I do really truly find it immensely entertaining that they do.  

I read a nice piece that took issue, not with the author, but with the packaging because, after all, she was thrust into the scheme.  But that article had nothing to say about what kind of novel we should have expected of a young girl. 

It's not that hard to find a great writing talent in a seventeen year old.  But, sustaining that?  For the length of a novel?  Please.  Who ARE you kidding?  That's why they invented short stories (not really) ... but it's ridiculous to even expect.  She had some newswriting experience.  That's like asking someone who religiously blogs - two, three paragraphs at a time - to crank out a novel.  There are wonderful novelists who blog.  The jury's out on whether wonderful bloggers can etc etc.

I'm thinking that critics are having a hard time really really condemning her - oooh, they want to - just like Oprah smacked her seal of disapproval.  They want some standards, they don't want to be painted with the same broad brush.  Boo hoo.  Thing is, we are responsible.  We've let this become an Open Source generation and because god forbid we apply critical standards to each other, decadence rules.  Decay.  Cooool. 

We learn from each other, we just do (oooh!  An added irony!  Too lazy to write a whole OTHER blog, I copied and pasted THIS for my businessy one, deleting the more abrasive-I'm-sure language.  And then I realized that THIS one could use a qualifier.  So here it is:  and it's great.  I  love Open Source for exciting generosity, for teaching us to share our knowledge.)  But Open Source has some how morphed into a landscape where only a handful of people bother to do the work.  The principle activity is copying and modifying and few people can even detect the difference. 

The sweetest irony is the media industry.  Mediabistro's founder wrote a satirical blog dedicated to this topic.  She professes sympathy with our beleaguered author because she, too, gets so steeped in the details of other's lives that she finds herself 'stealing' their actual life.  (I'm sorry to give such a poor synopsis, but it's second rate satire, at best).  Isn't that fucking amazing?  Mediabistro, home to writers of all stripes, but mostly marketing, advertising and short articles - they would take high ground? 

Among marketing writers, swiping and unoriginal copy and perspective is endemic.  Pop culture magazines?  Stop.  Once there's a hip new phrase book that comes out, everyone's using the same language, same rhythm, same snarky attitude.  And no one's saying: shut up!  Shut the fuck up until you've got something remotely unique to say.  I don't know why.  Apparently, we don't want to be perceived as ... I don't know. 

Forums and blogs are big fat petri dishes.  Plenty of exceptions and, in all honesty and with huge pleasure, I'd have to say that most people on my network are those exceptions. 

But in general, we're the ones letting it all go.  It just kills us to have our bullshit revealed, doesn't it? 

Oh yes.  We've met Miss Viswanathan.  And she's us.