Jon Liu

Something else bears mentioning re the Viswanathan story. Just about everyone is an Asian-American. David Zhou, the kid from the Crimson who went on national TV after he broke the story is Asian-American. Viswanathan is of course an Asian-American. So, I'm guessing, is my horse, Jon Liu of the Independent (who has teamed up with Shane Wilson on what they call Kaavyagate).

I'm late on everything—I live in the woods—but it interests me because my tribe, Jews, were the first great beneficiaries of the meritocracy: We joined the Establishment thanks to the SAT trifecta. Nicholas Lemann chronicled some of that in The Big Test, a generally fabulous work of reporting and analysis. I say some of it because while Lemann correctly identified the last Tribal Order of the Ruling Class as "the Episcopacy," thereby identifying them not just as WASPs but as Episcopalians, he peeled away from any religio-ethnic identification on the New Ruling Class. In his book he characterized it as a fuzzy rainbow mosaic, Jews, Asian-Americans, other ethnics. That was a bail. The arrival of Jews in the Establishment was clear to anyone who went thru Harvard in the '70s. Jews had podiumed, as they say in the Olympics, and the Jews who had podiumed didn't want to say as much. Might bring negative attention. As if no one had noticed.

Now it really does seem that Asian-Americans have crowded the aisles at the Meritocracy Fairway, and more power to them. Maybe it's a serial meritocracy. A You-go-next kind of thing. Maybe some day these Asian-American kids will exert some equitable influence over our Middle East policy!

(I love saying that.)

Guess Harvard kids aren't the only ones who like the packaged lit story. The Times is now Frey-ing Viswanathan. The paper of record hops on Jon Liu's piece this morning. But doesn't do nearly as good a job as Liu.

The great thing Liu did, or tried to do, was a literary postmortem on Kaavya Visnawathan (I hate this story—you try spelling her name some time). He went back over a bunch of her interviews and showed how her literary influences were just what you'd think a Harvard undergrad's would be: Kazuo Ishiguro (somebody help me!), Zadie Smith (whew), Jane Austen. Hey Harvard kids don't brag on reading Megan McCafferty, young adult novelist. Liu was taking this story to the next, meta- level. What made this Opal book?

I think Harvard kids have succeeded in Frey-ing Visnawathan. They've opened it up and made it delicious. This one won't end—if I know Harvard—till Visnawathan has given back her advance and dropped out. To understand what I'm saying, just read The Lord of the Flies, or A High Wind in Jamaica. Two (true) classics of young adult lit, in which young adults eviscerate one another and cook the liver over the camp fire.

Harvard is the most nastily competitive hive of pre-/post-/intrapubescent energy to be found anywhere this side of Pluto. Take it from me, bub. The kids who end up at Harvard have tunnel vision about success. They have been selected to possibly enter the American power structure, but as each of them walks through the door or the gates, I forget which it is, the President of Harvard hands them a secret little red ticket saying, Only 1 in 3 of you will make it in New York. Well one of every three doesn't care, tosses the ticket to the side. But the other two stitch the thing to their flesh, and they spend the next four years scratching one another's eyes out for what is called a Harvard Golden Pass, which allows you to ride the New York rides for free for a year.

I think that's how I remember it anyway. It's been a while.

All this to say that the best reporting on the Kaavya story is of course coming from other undergraduates. And at least one of them is on to the real angle. Jon Liu in the Harvard Independent has done a great piece unearthing some of the weird goings-on at the packaging mills that put together the chick lit:

The picture Skurnick paints of 17th Street and similar packaging firms suggests a contemporary publishing world that has more in common with market-driven, assembly-line industrial production than any romantic notions of the tortured solitary artist.

"How Sweet Valley High came into being," Skurnick explained to the Indy, "was Francine Pascal came to them with a concept for probably six books, and what was 17th Street Productions at the time -- they might have had a different name -- sold all six to Random House, and the books took off. What happens to a tremendously popular series like that is that a publisher will renew it, and they'll renew it for, let's say, 12 books for that year. But they'll say, 'Oh, we want to change it' -- 'Now they're in high school,' or 'Now they're going to be witches.' All sorts of things; whatever keeps them selling."

Few series-fiction "authors" write past Books Five or Six; nonetheless, successful ones like Pascal and Gossip Girl creator Cecily von Ziegesar, another 17th Street affiliate, continue to profit dozens of volumes deep into a series. How this lucrative business model sustains itself is the direct result of the efficiency and industry positioning achieved by the packagers.

"In my case, I was a former editor at the [17th Street] office where books are farmed out to. But there's a whole network of writers who mostly do this kind of book," Skurnick said, referring to scribes who churn out new installments long after a series' original author has dropped out of the picture. As "work-for-hire" employees with usually no royalty or copyright claims on their output, many of these writers labor with the hopes of gaining the connections that might land them a project of their own. Skurnick explained, "They write books that already exist in series, they pitch series themselves, they pitch standalones, they sort of exist in this netherworld in which they have a relationship with the packager and then, maybe eventually, they'll have a relationship with the publisher..."