review of
Crispin Hellion Glover's Oak Mot
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March 30, 2012

Warning to the reader of this review: all 3 of my reviews of Glover's bks begin w/ approximately the same contextualization. Otherwise, they aren't the same review.

I'm not very familiar w/ Crispin Hellion Glover's work. I've heard that he has a bit of a 'cult' following, I've heard that he was in some, by my standards, big budget films as an actor. I've seen a few of them: Back to the Future, River's Edge, The People vs Larry Flynt, & Alice in Wonderland - all of wch I've liked.

Then he was coming to one of the places where I work to perform & show his own films & I was to be the projectionist. I wondered: 'Will this guy be an arrogant megalomaniac asshole who's difficult to deal w/?' I read his rider. It wasn't too demanding, it was reasonable & professional. Still, it was either the 1st or one of the few riders I'd ever read for work & I started dreading the job. More stress that I don't need.

Then I met Glover & he was very friendly & likable. I watched him rehearse a bit w/ his Slide Show made from his bks. When we had a chance to talk, I mentioned Tom Philips' wonderful A Humament bk b/c of its similar techniques to Glover's own. & we talked a bit about Max Ernst's collage novels made from Victorian-era bk illustrations. Oddly, I didn't mention my own "Play Out Regress" in wch I extremely meticulously & methodically white-out the page of my high-school yrbk on wch my 16-yr-old encrypted self-description appeared. This piece, having been done in 1979, predates both Glover's work & Philips' 1980 publication date but doesn't work from Victorian novels & is far more conceptual & literary than it is aesthetic (as I wd argue both Philips' & Glover's work is).

Glover immediately offered me free copies of all the bks he had w/ him for sale. This astounded me b/c it was unexpectedly generous. It was then that I was sure that Glover's basic spirit is close to mine & that he isn't, indeed, 'Only In It for the Money'.

I phoned my girlfriend at home, knowing that she was coming to the show that nite, & asked her to gather materials that I cd give Glover in trade since I decided that his generosity shd be reciprocated in kind.

He performed his Big Slide Show wch consists of his standing audience-left to a projection of images from 8 or so of his bks. A sharp red spot is focused in such a way that his head & one gesturing arm are seen illuminated. Glover's delivery of the selected text is dramatic. This was an interesting way to experience the bks.

I decided to read Glover's bks in chronological order. That made Oak Mot 2nd. All of them remind me of Edward Gorey as far as their visual presentation goes & this one once again reminds me of Gorey as far as its morbidity goes - although Gorey is probably more morbid. The aforementioned Tom Philips is also important to mention again b/c Philips' A Humament is a thorough masterpiece of "treating" (as Philips puts it) a Victorian-era novel by painting over its pages to provide a very revised visual environment & a selective choice of text-left-revealed.

Oak Mot, like Rat Catching, however, is also quite different from Gorey & A Humament. While, like A Humament, it's a 'treatment' of a previously existing bk, it seems to me that the images culled for its collaged interior are often, if not entirely, of origin external to the bk that the text came from. The original, by the by, was called Oak-Mot & was written by Rev William Mumford Baker (1825-1883).

As w/ Rat Catching, Glover's main hand-touch seems to've been pen & ink borders & squiggly decoration w/ the same types of lines & blots used to black out unwanted words from the original but his technique has developed & I found his drawings & his added fotos & the way his handwritten text was incorporated into the original to be a bit more effective in skewing the original narrative along the lines of what're apparently his personal obsessions.

What are those obsessions? Those who've seen the 2 films he directed, will find that people congenital health problems such as Downs Syndrome & Cerebral Palsy. He also uses nazi & racist imagery. It's my understanding that he's neither a nazi or a racist. These images seem more to be aesthetic fixations.

One of the main characters of the original Oak-Mot novel seems to be a fellow who's physically & mentally weak - perhaps w/ difficulties in walking & talking. Perhaps this is the main reason why Glover picked the novel for his reworking - other than the obvious absence of copyright. Perhaps the original novel, written by a Presbyterian minister, had a moral regarding this character.

In Glover's treatment, sd character, "Adry", becomes more or less central. Whether that was the case in the original I can't say. Adry is apparently tormented by his fellow family members & eventually shot.

Before the title page, there's an illustration of an elephant, presumably done by Glover, that has the hand-written caption: "Before the book began, the New Uncle took care of this Elephant Somewhere else. (Please note the swastika, an ancient symbol of good luck.)" &, yes, there's a small swastika there. Now most readers of this bk will associate the swastika w/ nazism & Glover seems to be presenting himself as being in the camp of what one might call "swastika-reclaimers" - ie: people trying to re-establish the symbol's pre-nazi meaning. However, later, he throws Hitler into the story - hence supporting, for me at least, that it's actually the swastika as a nazi symbol that's more the aesthetic obsession. Strictly speaking, what Americans call the swastika is known to Germans as the "hackencross".

Glover's Oak-Mot also has branding "niggers" in it - this latter word handwritten in by him. Such content doesn't appear to've been in the original bk. Again, this seems somewhat gratuitous & obsessive & seems to support Glover's aesthetic rather than to make any point.

On page '65' (the numbers are from the original rather than being reflective of Glover's version) there's a section from the original re the 'need' for leaders. Ho hum. Whether Glover left this in to presage the appearance of Hitler later I can only speculate. "Rarely a body, however small, but there is born king among them. God has so ordained it, because the world would go to pieces without". Harumph.

Near the end, Glover seems to completely sidetrack the novel onto his own path. A foto-collage appears w/ Hitler on the right. Hitler's arm, perhaps originally in a nazi salute, has been cut-off midway in the collage & a meaty center has been drawn-in. The hand-written caption reads: "Much later in Life Virgin Prosy transcontinents to a different place (the DEUTCHLAND, the year 1926)".

All in all, Glover's reworking seems fluid & playful rather than something made in pursuit of a rigorous intellectual end. However, Glover might see it otherwise. During his Q&A after his performances & screenings, he was prolific in his statements of purpose. I wasn't always convinced. What I was convinced of was that he was a nice guy.

Earlier in the day of his 2nd night of presentation, someone rammed my car as it sat parked in front of my house. Given that I live very close to the bone, this caused my stress to skyrocket. As such, I was a nervous wreck by that night. Glover's general niceness went a long way toward rectifying that.

Good luck to ya meatey!

You'll know Crispin Hellion Glover as an actor (Thin Man in Charlie's Angels, McFly in Back to the Future trilogy, the 2003 remake of Willard, etc.).

However, Crispin Hellion Glover is strange. He's the man who starred in Rubin and Ed (one of my favorite comedies). He's the man who sings a song called "Automanipulator" about masturbation as well as a hilarious rendition of "These Boots are Made for Walkin'" on his very odd CD entitled The Big Problem does not equal the solution. The Solution equals Let It Be. He is a YouTube phenom with his shoe flinging at David Letterman when he stayed in character as Rubin. He's filming a trilogy of films containing midgets and people with cerebral palsy. Let's just say that he's on the fringe...

He's a fringe artist in more ways than one. I mentioned his CD and his movies but I'm writing to review one of his four books. Crispin's books are a combination of art (i.e. drawing/painting) and writing. He takes a very old book from the 1800s (this one 1868) and turns it into a collage. He tells his story by whiting/blacking out text, overwriting text, cutting out pages/sections, and adding bizzare drawings and photographs. He did this in Oak Mot and it's my understanding that his other books are similar.

Before I get to the spoilers, let me just say that it was a good book that was above all else - UNIQUE. That was precisely why I enjoyed it and why I like Crispin. I bought the book expecting a fringe art experience. I got it. This is NOT mainstream reading but it was a quick and interesting read nonetheless. I gave it 3 stars because it's not the sort of work I could read frequently nor is it the book that I put down and said, "Wow! That was brilliant!" It was good and worthy of 3 stars.

It doesn't really matter what I rate it. You'll either search this book out and read it or you won't. This isn't something that you stumble across at Barnes and Noble. You find it used on eBay or you order it directly from Crispin at CrispinGlover.com. I'd encourage you to have a look at the site. You'll be repulsed or you'll be intrigued. If you're like me, you'll be a bit of both but the intrigue will win and you'll place an order.

*****SPOILERS*****

Let me begin by saying what an OAK MOT is because I was dying to know what the hell it meant. Mot is another word for a grove of trees. So, an Oak Mot is a grove/cluster of oaks. Simple enough. That was what I would have guessed but I wasn't familiar with the word "mot".

The book is a very fast read coming in at under 100 pages (with plenty of blottetd out words and images to boot). It's the story of the Long family which is comprised of mom, dad, two girls (Bexy and Prosy), and three boys (Edward, Hubert, and Adry). Adry is both physically and mentally handicapped. The girls help to take care of Adry and the family appears to be generally happy. In the next chapter, Uncle "Brown" Bob shows up. He's a black man (they're a white family) who spends time with his brother, brother's wife, nieces, and nephews. Things start to get pretty odd from there. Adry begins to realize/think (but not verbalize) that he's smarter than the rest of the family. Uncle Bob can sense it. The family becomes less supportive of Adry and his handicaps. Uncle Bob starts branding (yes, hot iron) things and I'm pretty sure it's the people in the family. Mom's skin starts turning brown and she becomes a black woman. Before you know it, the kids are sitting out on the front porch with Uncle Bob wanting to shoot at some cattle and someone shoots Adry (you're lead to think it was intentional and that it was Edward who shot him). Uncle Bob leaves shortly thereafter.

Weird so far, right?

Well, it finishes with Prosy getting older and falling in love with Adolf Hitler (called "Mr. H"). They have strange interactions (the book get's pretty hard to interpret here) and Mr. H wonders, "Swastika = ?" Then, Hitler dies and she survives him.

OOOOO-K...

As I said above, I got what I was looking for - ODD. Believe it or not, I'd be interested to read another by Crispin. Maybe I'll order Rat Catching soon. ( )