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To Blur Plagiarism's Lines, Look to 'Star Wars'

This week, there are two stories of novels that draw too heavily on the work of other writers. Novelist and book critic Lev Grossman says that Kaavya Viswanathan deserves all the criticism she is getting.

But, Grossman says, Lori Jareo (who wrote an unauthorized Star Wars book) is one of the unsung heroes of the wired, post-modern cultural universe: a fan-fic, or fan fiction, writer.

Lev Grossman is a staff writer for Time magazine. His latest novel is Codex.

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