[Answer] How Should One Evaluate the Works of “Jin Yongxin” and “Linghuyong”?

[Answer] How Should One Evaluate the Works of “Jin Yongxin” and “Linghuyong”?

I’ve read them both. The books themselves are fairly average. After so many years, I still retain vivid memories of the plots in Jin Yong’s novels, but as for the book mentioned here, I can remember almost nothing about the story except its title.

Over time, I’ve also gradually come to realize that books published under the guise of—or in imitation of—famous authors actually have quite a large market. Take Dream of the Red Chamber as an example: I myself have read no fewer than five different continuations or imitations of it, and those are only the ones that remained after the rest were sifted out over time. One can only imagine how many similar books must have existed when Dream of the Red Chamber was at the height of its popularity. Even in the widely circulated version today, the final 40 chapters are generally recognized as a continuation written by Gao E. And of course, compared with the first 80 chapters, the gap in quality is obvious.

The fact that Jin Yong’s novels have been continued or supplemented by a large number of writers from his own era and later, to some extent, reflects just how classic and beloved his works are. At the same time, these derivative works also serve to enrich and expand on plotlines that the original novels did not fully develop.

But overall, in artistic creation—and novels are of course a form of art—imitation itself is very difficult to make superior to the original. After all, a novel is a work that fully embodies a writer’s individual characteristics. No matter how hard an imitator tries, it is impossible to perfectly capture both the outward form and the inner spirit of the original, let alone those clumsy imitations of already clumsy imitations, which are hardly worth mentioning.