Dear Ms. Viswanathan:

Hello, my name is Benito Mario, aspiring author and student debtor.  Recently I became aware that you received a summer associate gig at Sullivan and Cromwell after disgracing yourself with your plagiarized novel “How Opal Mehta, Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life.”  Between your sweet gig and your ridiculous book deal you are quite well off despite not being as wealthy as others who have been the subject of this column like our dear friend Tiger Woods.  However, the most telling sign of your wealth and power, your admission to Georgetown Law and fancy law firm notwithstanding, was your ability to get such a large book deal in the first place as a first-time unpublished author.  Money begets money.  Debt begets debt.  That’s why you should pay my student loans.  To break the cycle.

Read on to find out what is most pathetic and disgraceful about your conduct.

You got a book deal and then were too lazy to write a book.  You were catering to a group that reads the works of Lisa Scottoline and finds Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys difficult to follow.  So you plagiarized.  That was sleazy and dishonest.  But again, here’s the kicker, you didn’t plagiarize some complicated legal dissertation you plagiarized garbage.

Perhaps it’s best to approach this with an analogy.  Say you had to produce 250 pages of pure gibberish.  Would it be faster to just mash the keyboard or copy someone else’s?  Copying chitlit is like trying to copy another person’s sweat stain after jogging a couple miles.  Not only are all sweat stains of equal size more or less equal, copying someone else’s is needlessly tedious.

Now I will be the first to admit my mistake if you had a wordfile with other author’s books.  But between editors and ghost writers there is no need to EVER plagiarize a work with less than no substance.  Sarah Palin has a book for petesake and that book is technically NON-fiction.  You really really ought to be ashamed f yourelf.

But there is a way to redeem yourself in some very small part.  You can pay my student loans.  Because I am a better person than you I will take that money and instead of paying off my own debt, start a fund where students who are similarly afflicted can apply for relief. 

So again I say pay my student loans. And you disgust me.