Harvard lesson in schadenfreude

The rise and crashing fall of the Harvard University sophomore accused of plagiarizing passages of her debut novel has made some of her classmates smile, some sympathize.

A quiet jealousy circulated on the competitive campus when Kaavya Viswanathan’s hefty two-book deal became public, before allegations surfaced that she had cribbed from other teen novels.

Last Thursday her publisher, Little, Brown and Co., yanked “How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life” off bookstore shelves nationwide.

“Some people are downright gleeful about this. I think the word is schadenfreude,” said junior Rita Parai, 20, of Buffalo, N.Y., invoking a German term that means to delight in the misfortune of others.

Other Harvard students are disillusioned -- and even sympathetic -- to the plight of the 19-year-old author. Most agree, however, that there are too many similarities between Viswanathan’s book and two novels by Megan McCafferty to be a coincidence.

“I just feel bad for her, even if it was totally intentional,” said Katherine Mims, 20, a freshman from Sterling, Va. “I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt, like most students. But when you lay the passages next to each other, it’s hard to deny.”