THE BELLS AND DUST OF UNDERACHIEVEMENT

What follows are two incompatible yet highly plausible stories regarding my comrade and competitor David Schoffman. That I have great affection for this imperfect man should be of little consequence.



The first story is about how Schoffman, after unexpectedly winning the 2009 Zacharias R.Koenig Short Book Award, was emboldened to make a short film. He subsequently entered that film in the Omphalos of Unreason Film Festival where he was awarded the Silver Medal. What struck Alou N'batwa, one of the principal jurors of the competition, was how he was able to "spankingly reanimate the surrealist idiom without the musty opulence of 'un mouvement recherché.'"



The second story is about how Schoffman mockingly turns language into a puppet show of contempt. To call The Broken Mandolin bad poetry is to dishonor the entire category of Bad Poetry. His short film, with its faint echoes of Moravagine's 1929 silent feature Z.Z. is a blathering tangle of supercilious aposiopesis'. Will the floodtide of Schoffman's ineptitude ever reach its crest?