A star is shorn

KAAVYA VISWANATHAN is a teenager who was tossed into the star-maker machinery.

Back in February, that machine -- an agent, a book packager, and a publisher -- presented her as a wunderkind. She was a Harvard student with a $500,000 book deal. Her first novel, ''How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got A Life," was widely hyped.

Today, Viswanathan faces plagiarism charges. Sections of ''Opal" were apparently taken from novels written by Megan McCafferty. And, as suddenly imploding stars do, Viswanathan apologized on television, telling Katie Couric that she never meant to steal. Viswanathan said she loves McCafferty's books, so much so that Viswanathan ''internalized" the other writer's words and used them unconsciously.

The explanation was tough to watch and tougher to believe. McCafferty's publisher says there are 40 examples of Viswanathan using McCafferty's words.

There is no excuse for plagiarism. But like Opal, the main character in her novel, Viswanathan is a kid who has been overhandled. Her parents hired a private counselor to help her apply to college. That counselor showed Viswanathan's writing to a literary agency. The agency brought in the book packager. And the packager steered Viswanathan away from her initial, darker idea for a novel. Viswanathan said she was encouraged to find her own voice. Instead she found someone else's. The result was teenage chick-lit.

Now the machine has churned into reverse. The book packager's president says the company only helped with the novel's concept, not the writing. And on Thursday, Viswanathan's publisher, Little, Brown & Co., announced that it would withdraw all unsold copies of ''Opal."

What first novel would Viswanathan have written on her own? What words might she have used if she hadn't been helped to find what was, allegedly, her own voice? She'll never know.

What remains is the scandal. The customer comment section on ''Opal's" Amazon.com page is a public wailing wall crowded with both forgiveness and scolding.

The twisted moral: Whoever one is, one isn't good enough -- get a packager who knows that what sells is what has already sold. Original ideas and people face resistance.

Joni Mitchell sang of the problem in ''Free Man in Paris," said to be about her agent. ''You know I'd go back there tomorrow / But for the work I've taken on / Stoking the star maker machinery /Behind the popular song."

This is America, so Viswanathan will no doubt have a second act, in which she sheds the current scandal. As she moves on, she should take the advice of her novel's title: Get a life -- and make sure it is entirely her own.