Bring Me the Head of Opal Mehta

by Kay Stoner

In the spring of 2006, the book How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life was sacrificed to the gods of the publishing establishment. Its author, Kaavya Viswanathan, was thrust into the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1430309873
• ISBN13: 9781430309871
• Release Date: October 2006
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Length: 184 Pages
• Weight: 0.61 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Insightful analysis of pop culture and technology

This book reminds me of Prairie Home Companion-- and this is a good thing. It's insightful, kind hearted, smart, and not to everyone's taste. Using the chick-lit scandal of the book How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life as a starting point, Ms. Stoner examines the phenomenon of tech outsourcing. (Opal Mehta... was a teen book written by a teen. The author was given a half million dollar advance for a story found later to be largely plagiarized.) Along the way, she tackles American narcissism, racial relationships here and elsewhere, and the challenge of following your muse. The result is surprisingly readable, funny, sometimes infuriating, and very personal. It's important to note that Ms. Stoner doesn't claim to be an economist. She makes it clear that her linking Opal Mehta with IT is based on her personal experiences and informed speculation. And it's also intriguing that although Ms. Stoner has always been a writer, (and who should hate plagiarists more than a fellow writer?) she is compassionate in her view of the ill-fated author. I find it completely believable that the time was right, that if Kaavya had not appeared with her sub-par manuscript, some other attractive young thing would have been tweaked for success. The publishing world needed a wunderkind and created one--needed one so badly that a bad manuscript was accepted and not scrutinized enough for anyone to see the plagiarism before publication. And having worked for AT & T, I feel that Ms. Stoner's interpretation of tech outsourcing makes sense. Ms. Stoner makes the fascinating observation that the plagiarism was discovered not by a reviewer but by readers blogging. And her sources(aside from personal experiences) are also mostly on-line. What a wonderful joining of information: A printed book mostly from on-line sources! A downer is that some of the very best points she makes can't possibly be explained in words. There is no way to comprehend what it's like to be an American enduring anti-American prejudice without living it. Nor is is possible to explain how Americans think our way is THE way unless you've made your home in another country. The people most likely to rejoice in this book are world travelers who have talents in both technical and creative fields. A great book for a select audience.

New book explores offshore outsourcing challenges and plagiarism scandal in a common global context

In her new book, "Bring Me the Head of Opal Mehta," author and technologist Kay Stoner draws surprising connections between the tribulations of disgraced Harvard sophomore Kaavya Viswanathan and the challenges of offshore technical outsourcing. In the spring of 2006, the book "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life" was sacrificed to the gods of the publishing establishment. Its author, Kaavya Viswanathan, was thrust into the limelight as a plagiarist and lost her historic book deal. After a few weeks of impassioned online debate, the scandal faded to an uncomfortable memory. But the drama that set the blogosphere on fire was not an isolated incident in the American publishing scene. Indeed, the events which set industry insiders scrambling and sent Kaavya into hiding for the summer of 2006 are indicative of current globalizing, commercially driven trends also seen in offshore outsourcing. In the literary arena, a promising new novelist was introduced to a transnational publishing corporation by a connected insider, she was teamed up with trained professionals to produce her book, and a new career was launched with much fanfare. Likewise, based on an attractive price point and industry hype about the next wave of offshore technical producers, high tech management has embraced overseas development outsourcing with gusto, teaming up onshore developers with newly hired offshore staff, and launching projects with a much-vaunted "follow the sun" methodology. But just as the fundamental quality of Kaavya Viswanathan's work was lacking (more than 40 of her passages bore striking similarities to other writers' works), beneath the surface of day-to-day operations, many in the high tech industry are struggling with issues of quality and competence on both sides of the globe. Process is undermined by cultural conflicts, substandard work is produced by underqualified staff, the resources of an already compromised American high tech work force are taxed even further, and projects are either completed at great expense to morale and quality, or they fail outright. In worst cases, contracts are ended abruptly, be they fledgling literary careers or service agreements between Western companies and offshore BPO providers. But the author contends that such failures stem not only from the shortcomings of producers, but from the way these producers are identified and integrated into organizations. "It's easy to blame Indian offshore staff for projects that miss deadlines, and it's tempting to blame Kaavya Viswanathan for her substandard novel," says Stoner. "But there are larger issues at stake: business leaders underestimate cultural differences and they fail to provide needed oversight. It may seem easy to send a project to the other side of the world, where people promise to complete it according to plan, but 'tossing work over the fence' and then looking away while it's under construction, is a recipe for disaster. We're seeing the ripple effect