Ivy League Trash.

My boyfriend and I walked around the east side of providence. We thought it would be fun to photograph things like this forty ounce malt liquor, which we found, just as pictured, nestled near the ivy-covered halls of Brown.

Olde English 800. 40 ounces of escape, reasonably priced and available at package and convenience stores in neighborhoods much discussed, but never visited, by Brown students.

No matter who bought it or drank it, whether out of a desperate need to divest sobriety inexpensively, or out of shrunken-tee'd, skinny jean'd, bright sneaker'd irony, it was left just as we found it: Trash of the ivy league.

Which brings me to Kaavya. A 19 year old Harvard sophomore, she's recently been caught plagiarizing her first novel, a teen lit-piece that was first thought to be semi-autobiographical and is now known to be a high-strung, overdone, overwrought retread of a similar novel, with a jaunty subcontinental flavor.

Her parents paid up to twenty thousand dollars to get her into Harvard. A set of coincidences hooked her up with book packagers- author handlers that turn an attractive person of any talent level into a hot property. Privilege potentiates privilege. And the location of that potentiation is the ivy league.

Harvard. Brown. Yale. Occasionally, the children of the middle and lower classes get onto these nepotism factories, but that only serves to perpetuate the illusion of a meritocracy. The poorer you are, the less likely it is that you'll get into an ivy league school. The poorer you are, the less likely it is that if you'll get in, you'll finish.

Her parents so wanted to secure her a place in the class I can only assume they occupy themselves, they spent tens of thousands of dollars on consultants. They had the connections to help her get an agent, and get their attractive, ethnically distinctive, charming daughter to the right handlers to get her a very lucrative book deal. She had everything going for her. Everything other people- regardless of talent, ability, or skill, would kill to have. And none of it, other than the workmanlike manner in which, I'm sure, she got the grades and test scores that got her in the door- was a product of her striving. It was a product of connections and consultants. Her edge was not her own.

I'm smart. I'm driven. I'm a super writer (!). I'm talented. I'm graduating from a third-rate university, skin peeling off my hands from work. My classmates from my third-rate liberal arts college have faired not much better; those who came in with connections left and met with success. Those who had no connections left and went to work for the New York City Public Schools. Talent had nothing to do with it. I have friends who could write a screenplay that would blow Sofia Coppola's ass out through her pussy; but they don't have famous daddies. Or even rich ones.

It's hard to know what Kaavya's intent was. She may have genuinely been stressed out, and recapitulated bits of someone else's work. She may have thought she wouldn't get caught; although, I recommend Harvard add a course in common sense and reading comprehension if that is true. When one plagiarizes, one should pick a novel more than five years old, and one without a sequel currently on the best seller list. She may have wanted to get caught. She may have not wanted to write a novel, and not known how to get out of it. She may have been misled by handlers.

It's easy to know what the problem is: there is no reward for merit or talent in this society. Connections matter first. Knowing someone gets you in the door; it doesn't guarantee success. However, this is no great comfort to those waiting in the hall. I will never be a writer, or an artist, or an actress, or a journalist, or anything with any specific cachet. These careers are too attractive to the children of the rich and powerful to be available to any but a lucky few of the children of middle class. Also, I'm too fat for like, three of those careers.

I've given up on writing, lately. It's too hard to be told that you do something well, and have to explain to people why it doesn't matter.

I wonder if Kaavya values the things she does well, whatever they are. Poor girl. She's been consulted and packaged and marketed for years now. I wonder if she shits by committee. I wonder if she wipes by consensus. I hope she isn't able to parlay this plagiarism into success in any field. I hope she learns from this, and finds something entirely satisfying to her, that she doesn't even want to take short cuts in- and does that.