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Thread: How difficult would it have been for JY and GL to use each other's ideas?

  1. #1
    Moderator Ken Cheng's Avatar
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    Default How difficult would it have been for JY and GL to use each other's ideas?

    When Jin Yong and Gu Long were both writing their wuxia novels between the 1950s and 1980s, copyright laws were not as strict as they are today...particularly in East Asia.

    That makes me wonder...if, back in the day, Jin Yong and Gu Long wanted to use each other's creations in his own novels, how difficult would it be to accomplish, both practically and legally?

    For example, say in the mid-1970s, Gu Long is working on a new LUK SIU FUNG novel. He wants to namecheck Gwok Seung as the founder of the Ngor Mei Sect. Gwok Seung, of course, is a Jin Yong character. First, would Jin Yong agree to let Gu Long use his character in such a manner and second, even if Jin Yong were amenable to the idea, would copyright laws have allowed it (without complicated legal and financial licensing deals)? Of course, the same would apply if Jin Yong had wanted to namecheck any Gu Long character during his novel revisions (say namechecking Lee Chum Foon in a revision of SMILING PROUD WANDERER).

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    This is an interesting question, and I'm surprised it didn't happen a lot given the loose copyright laws. There are many people more knowledgeable than me around here, but my guess would be that it was because in some sense a lot of the early wuxia was written between people who might have been socially friendly were somewhat of professional rivals. Liang Yusheng (Chen Wentong) and Jin Yong (Louis Cha) were writing both serialized wuzia fiction and serious journalistic articles for different newspapers in Hong Kong. I'm assuming the different newspapers were likely rivals at least on some level, and that the wuxia fiction was something that the newspapers offered to expand readership (with JY copying LY's lead in this), and it would have been somewhat strange to include stuff from your rival's fictional universe. An analogy to US TV would be for dramas on the same network to have crossovers and spin-offs or cross-references that stay on that network, and don't really cross over to different networks (very rarely).

    I don't know why Gu Long didn't draw more from his seniors, as he was operating a decade after JY and LY had started, so he had a lot to look at. One thing that is hard for me to entangle is where some of the depictions of wulin came from in the 20th century. I have to go through my translation of the Water Margin, but how the various groups and sects of the wulin are depicted evolved quite a bit between it and 1955 (like how Taoists and Wudang are depicted). And it's not just because WM is before LOCH, as DGSD takes place before the events in WM. Although as an example of an interesting name check, Guo Jing's father is explicitly noted as being a descendent of Guo Sheng, a fictional character in the Water Margin. There are a few other mentions of the Water Margin characters as being real in the LOCH universe, but they all occur right at the beginning of the LOCH text. It's maybe as if JY wanted to make sure his readers know that the was going to be connecting the events of his story with those previous events and it would be in the same spirit.

    I can't comment on general legal issues, but the use of shared fictional people, places and things has been more or less common in fiction in the US and the UK at different times. Particularly in the pulp fiction era of the 30's and 40's, a lot of the authors who were friends would often include a shout out to something in the the writing of their friend or someone they admired, and no one seemed to mind, and people seemed to like it. It also gave some of the fictional events a greater feeling of reality, for example if many different authors referred to something, then it seemed more like legitimate historical fact. I think sometimes they asked and sometimes they just did it as a sort of Easter Egg surprise. When the community of writers are all friends and publishing different stand alone novels or stories, then they have more freedom to do that.

    One of the most extreme examples I can think of is the Necronomicon. The author HP Lovecraft created it as an ancient secret book of magical spells in his horror stories. However, author others when they needed to have an evil spellbook in their stories just used the same book, and it just kept expanding, even the very popular author Stephen King has used it in his stories I think. People have even published multiple fake editions/translations of the Necronomicon itself, and now many people seem to think it was a real historical document. People used and continue to use a lot of the fictional place names that Lovecraft created as well (Arkham as a place name even made it into Batman comics).

    I'm guessing GL and JY might have used some of each others creations a little more liberally if they wanted. However, GL was his junior, and maybe didn't want to be accused of stealing, presumably he was strongly influenced in his depiction of the wulin from JY already, so didn't want to make it more explicit. On the other hand JY was more senior and famous already, and a big newspaper editor and then screenwriter He might not have even considered taking a character idea from GL. It is interesting to speculate if JY read GL's novels while was actively writing himself, as he was a pretty busy guy and seems to have no problem coming up with ideas on his own.

    I wonder if modern writing can't refer to characters from the work of JY, GL, and LY in much the same way that authors in the English language can reference characters like Dracula or Sherlock Holmes (granted those are off copyright). If you have a character in your story acknowledge one of those famous characters or events in a different story, it's a sort of homage to the original author.

    Ken, you know infinitely more about this stuff than I do; I'd be interested in your thoughts.

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    Thanks for your long post, I always enjoy reading things like that.

    There is a translation going on now by the user deathblade of Giddens Ko's "Kung Fu". Within the first few chapters it already mentions and playfully changes a lot of JY's works. For example, Linghu Chong apparently never used the Dugu 9 Swords, but it was actually the Dugu 9 Whips, but was just recorded wrong over the years !

    HP Lovecraft is also a strange case. It feels like even though he wrote his work in the early 1900's, there was a cult following and explosion in his popularity in the late 1900's, but has since died down. I know very few people that actually read his works, but names like Cthulu and perhaps the Necronomicon are somewhat well known.
    Last edited by tape; 05-13-14 at 07:59 PM.

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    I knew that Jin Yong and Liang Yusheng were friends and interacted, but according to this part of a profile of Gu Long, it looks like he hung out with Jin Yong and Ngai Hong, at least a little bit:

    http://koolung.tripod.com/extra.html

    Does anyone have any idea how much exposure they would have had to each other's writing at different stages? By 1960 Jin Yong already had a movie out (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0201121/), but Gu Long was just writing his first book off in Taiwan. Jin Yong was publishing in a newspaper, which even if it sometimes meant a small circulation (some things indicates that initially it might have been quite modest in its readership), at least he did have an automatic audience, so could start getting known right away. Conversely, it seems it is harder to go from being an unknown author to getting a famous book as quickly.

    My largely ignorant perception is that Gu Long didn't start getting famous until the late 60's, just about the time Jin Yong was finishing up his initial writings, ending in 1970 before spending rest of the time doing rewriting, so timewise it might have been difficult for GL to influence JY's writing. Unfortunately, I can find very little in depth biographical information on GL in English. I'd like to learn a bit more about his background and influences. It sounds like he might have majored in English and/or other European languages in school, so that is how he got such an access to foreign styles of writing and influenced by things like English mystery and adventure novels.

    Conversely, there are two books on literary criticism on JY in English that also have a lot of history and background (The Jin Yong Phenomenon which is a compilation of essays edited by Ann Huss and Paper Swordsmen by John Hamm). Gu Long is only mentioned in passing in each of these books. In the Jin Yong Phenomenon though there is an interesting passage comparing GL & JY. The author of the essay, Cheng Pingyuan is talking about genre boundaries and incorporation of different influences on wuxia fiction and he writes:

    The fact that martial arts novels adopt multiple components from different genres places enormous demands on the breadth and depth of knowledge of the author. Gu Long succeeds by personal genius, but Jin Yong is the only "authentic" (mingmen zhengpai) martial arts novelist.

    I have no idea what mingmen zhengpai means. It is "upright door" literally? Some expression for being solidly representative of something?

    Basically he goes on to talk about how Jin Yong knew (knows I guess is more proper) more about history than any other wuxia writer (lectured on it, eventually got a PhD from Cambridge in it, etc.), which obviously was hugely influential in his writing. However, nothing more is said about Gu Long and his influences.

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    Moderator Ken Cheng's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by AlamoRemebered View Post
    I don't know why Gu Long didn't draw more from his seniors, as he was operating a decade after JY and LY had started, so he had a lot to look at.
    Gu Long also took a somewhat different approach than did his contemporaries. Whereas the others had some aspirations or pretensions of writing serious literature, Gu Long knew that he was writing pulp fiction for the masses and didn't try to pretend otherwise. Whereas the others might have taken their cues from Dickens, Tolstoy, etc., Gu Long openly admitted that he was trying to ape Ian Fleming's style from the Bond novels. It did result in a unique style of wuxia writing unlike any other. When you read a Gu Long story, you can positively identify it as a Gu Long story (it's also a ripe target for parody). Some members of this forum have gotten chuckles for writing entire posts in Gu Long's signature style.

    I can't comment on general legal issues, but the use of shared fictional people, places and things has been more or less common in fiction in the US and the UK at different times. Particularly in the pulp fiction era of the 30's and 40's, a lot of the authors who were friends would often include a shout out to something in the the writing of their friend or someone they admired, and no one seemed to mind, and people seemed to like it. It also gave some of the fictional events a greater feeling of reality, for example if many different authors referred to something, then it seemed more like legitimate historical fact. I think sometimes they asked and sometimes they just did it as a sort of Easter Egg surprise. When the community of writers are all friends and publishing different stand alone novels or stories, then they have more freedom to do that.

    One of the most extreme examples I can think of is the Necronomicon. The author HP Lovecraft created it as an ancient secret book of magical spells in his horror stories. However, author others when they needed to have an evil spellbook in their stories just used the same book, and it just kept expanding, even the very popular author Stephen King has used it in his stories I think. People have even published multiple fake editions/translations of the Necronomicon itself, and now many people seem to think it was a real historical document. People used and continue to use a lot of the fictional place names that Lovecraft created as well (Arkham as a place name even made it into Batman comics).
    Speaking of Batman, during the 1970s and 1980s, DC Comics published a few Batman stories that featured the Dark Knight teaming up with Sherlock Holmes, pairing up two of fiction's most famous detectives. I wonder what arrangements Warner/DC Comics made with the estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to pull off that one.

    Ken, you know infinitely more about this stuff than I do.
    I wouldn't say that, necessarily.

    Quote Originally Posted by AlamoRemebered View Post

    My largely ignorant perception is that Gu Long didn't start getting famous until the late 60's, just about the time Jin Yong was finishing up his initial writings, ending in 1970 before spending rest of the time doing rewriting, so timewise it might have been difficult for GL to influence JY's writing.
    You're right; the heyday of Gu Long didn't begin until Jin Yong was done with his wuxia writing. Gu Long was Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd to Jin Yong's Beatles.

    Unfortunately, I can find very little in depth biographical information on GL in English. I'd like to learn a bit more about his background and influences. It sounds like he might have majored in English and/or other European languages in school, so that is how he got such an access to foreign styles of writing and influenced by things like English mystery and adventure novels.
    Yes. Gu Long mentioned Ian Fleming as a particular influence, as well as cinema. Gu Long's stories tend to have a more cinematic feel to them than Jin Yong's do. You can also detect the influence of (Japanese film director) Akira Kurosawa in Gu Long's work.

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