SON HISTOIRE ET SES CAUSES

BACK AT WORK IN HIS RUSTIC, ROOMY, LOS ANGELES STUDIO, MY HOPEFUL ALLY, DAVID SCHOFFMAN IS DETERMINED TO PROVE HIS CRITICS WRONG.

Though the critics were enthralled by my modest offerings 

at the Top Tomato show, they were far less captivated by David's overwrought and torpid polyptych. In an otherwise temperate review, Didier Sepharad of La Sonnette Hebdomadaire described Schoffman as a 'visual gasbag" (gascon visuelle). Caustically, he continued with a series of ad hominem characterizations, calling him, among other things a "bloviating Saussurian" (crieur Saussurian). Not to be outdone, Francoise Shalosh, chief cultural critic of L'Image Acoustique, France's leading literary periodical called Shoffman's (sic) work "yammering carrion" (des cadavres parlants) "unfit for public consumption" (impropres à la consommation publique).

All in all David has taken it all in stride, chalking it up to anti-Semitism and the deep cultural divide between France and the United States.