Accepting criticism

(Baonghean) - During a meeting with writers in Hue at the beginning of 2014, female writer Ha Khanh Linh held up a copy of her book, recently published by the Literature Publishing House, and said: “Attention, everyone, this is Linh’s new novel. The third in a three-part series: People of the Capital, Fire of the Capital, and Footprints of a Mother. But sadly and painfully for Linh, in this book, all instances of the word “vô” (without) were considered by the publisher’s editor as a local dialect word, so they changed it to “vào” (into), turning the book into a collection of meaningless, naive, and absurd sentences, which is very embarrassing!”

The writers present at the meeting immediately opened the newly printed book, still smelling of ink, by writer Ha Khanh Linh. All of them went from surprise to indignation at the negligence and outrageous, unimaginable errors of the Literature Publishing House. Immediately, writer Ngo Minh typed an article titled "In & In, the editor of the publishing house has no sense of words!" into his computer. And just as quickly, the article was uploaded online and sent directly to the Literature Publishing House's website. In the article, writer Ngo Minh pointed out a series of sentences containing the word "vô" (in) that the editor of the Literature Publishing House had illogically changed to "vào" (into) in this book. Specifically: unintentionally, it was changed to "into love," "extremely," "into together," "unable to," "uneducated," "immoral," "disrespectful," etc. In general, all words like "undefined," "unintentional," "unfortunate," "unbound," "illogical," "useless," "misfortune never comes alone," etc., were all changed by the editor to "into"! As a result, the book became a collection of nonsensical, meaningless, illogical, unliterary, and even uncultured statements! For example, the sentence "I am extremely grateful to you" became "I am completely grateful to you." The sentence "I hope you are safe and sound" became "I hope you enter the course"... If you keep changing the word "without" to "into," then insults like "uneducated" or "immoral" might become commands like "into study," or praise and recognition for good deeds like "into the path"...

Reading writer Ngo Minh's article, we see that the author's critical attitude is very thorough; in fact, the writer cannot hide his indignation. Right from the title, the author of the article does not hesitate to state directly, "the editors at the publishing house are illiterate." Furthermore, some newspapers even printed "illiterate" to further emphasize the publishing house's weakness. With such harsh criticism from writers, let's see how they will respond?

Surprisingly, just a few hours after the article was published, writer Ha Khanh Linh received an apology from the literary publishing house, and writer Ngo Minh received a letter sincerely acknowledging the criticism and thanking the author of the article. The content of the publishing house's letter is as follows:

"XBVH House, No. 9/XBVH"

Hanoi, January 22, 2014

Dear Mr. Ngo Minh,

Recently, the author's blog published an article titled "The Publishing House Editor Is Illiterate," mentioning the glaring errors in the editing of the novel "Mother's Footprints," by author Ha Khanh Linh, published by the Literature Publishing House in 2013. Specifically, all instances of the word "vô" (without) in the book were changed to "vào" (into).

First of all, the publishing house sincerely thanks you for your timely feedback and criticism regarding our publications. After reviewing and checking the book's proofs and editing process, the publishing house found that the printing errors you pointed out are accurate and are technical errors from the typesetting department. The Literature Publishing House has issued a written apology to writer Ha Khanh Linh for this mistake. Currently, the publishing house has stopped distributing and recalled the book "Mother's Footprints". In the near future, the publishing house will correct and reprint the book to replace the erroneous copies for customers who purchased them. Once again, the Literature Publishing House sincerely thanks writer Ngo Minh for his valuable feedback and criticism, which helped the publishing house promptly detect errors and contribute to improving the quality of literary books to better serve our readers.

Thus, through this story, we see that in cultural behavior, the culture of receiving criticism should have a relative independence from the culture of criticism itself. The critic may be hot-tempered, angry, or make mistakes in their critical attitude. That belongs to the culture of criticism, which we will discuss later. But the person receiving criticism should base their attitude on the content of the criticism and suggestions of the critic, truly seeking to understand and confront their own shortcomings in order to resolve to correct them. The person being criticized should not dwell too much on the critic's attitude and, especially, should not utter empty, flowery words, simply going along with the flow without a genuine intention to correct their mistakes and shortcomings.

Writer Ngo Minh may not have restrained his anger and used rather harsh words to criticize the Literature Publishing House. However, this did not prevent the Literature Publishing House from sincerely accepting the criticism and correcting its shortcomings thoroughly and properly. The story of the publishing house's leadership accepting criticism is a manifestation of a culture of accepting criticism that is well worth our reflection.

Thach Quy