BOOK REVIEW An extraordinary life, an ordinary man Don't Call Me a Crook by Bob Moore
Reviewed by Kent Ewing
HONG KONG - Bob Moore was a thief, a con artist, a racist, a drunkard and an
irredeemable scoundrel. But - or so the loquacious Scotsman insists in his
long-lost memoir, Don't Call Me a Crook - his crimes and other excesses
were the pardonable offshoots of his zest for life and love of adventure at a
time when the world itself was a lawless mess.
The Glaswegian's pseudonymous autobiography, largely ignored when it was first
published in 1935, has been rediscovered, edited and reissued by Dissident
Books publisher Nicholas Towasser. This is Towasser's second publishing venture
following Dissident's re-release last year, as the US presidential campaign was
hitting
full stride, of H L Menken's 1926 tirade against the American political system, Notes
on Democracy.
Towasser's aim as an alternative publisher is to rediscover forgotten texts of
an earlier age that have new relevance today. With Don't Call Me a Crook,
the publisher claims to have unearthed a "literary treasure" that - like
Menken's Notes - failed to make a critical splash in its own time.
Indeed,
before being rescued by Towasser, Moore's rambunctious memoir was threatened
with extinction: After coming across the book during one of his treasure hunts
in cob-webbed corners of the New York Public Library, the publisher searched
the world and could find only four other copies extant. In a six-page
introduction to Moore's salty tale, Towasser recounts his delight upon reading
its opening page and, once he had finished the book, his conviction that he had
exhumed a lost classic.
Given the quotidian nature of both the author's prose and intellect, however,
that conviction seems misplaced. Moore, whose real name was Robert MacMillan
Allison, does not, as Towasser suggests, belong among legendary literary tramps
such as poet and novelist Charles Bukowski. He may have led a fascinating
rogue's life and personally roared his way through the 1920s, but his insights
about that life and the tumultuous history in which it was bound up tend toward
the insipid, while his descriptions are weighted with cliches.
Nevertheless, Moore's chronicle makes for sometimes captivating reading,
especially for those interested in European exploitation of China in the early
part of the 20th century, a drama in which Moore played a gleeful part as a
marine engineer working on the Yangtze River. Of one of his ships, Moore
writes:
When I was on the Ho-a-Haing I had two Chinese servants. They
would do everything I told them, even put my clothes on - down to my shoes and
my socks. One of them would curl up like a dog and sleep on the mat across my
door. It is no wonder that a man back in England starts to feel the call of the
East.
While Moore insists he is not a crook, he is most
certainly a cad who either deserts or is sacked from every job he ever takes.
As a husband and a father, he is such a failure that his wife abandons him
twice, the second time for good, taking with her their recently born child.
When not a happy vagabond, Moore works as a hotel superintendent in Boston (who
floods the premises), a cook in New York City (who burns down the restaurant
that has hired him) and an engineer on a New York millionaire's yacht (which
capsizes).
He also steals diamonds in New York, runs booze during prohibition in Al
Capone's Chicago and seduces women (sometimes older women of means) and drinks
himself into oblivion across the globe. And he may be wanted for murder, but
that's not completely clear - to him or to us.
As a marine engineer, Moore sees the world - and abuses it - from his native
Scotland to the Americas to Egypt to Japan. But it is in China, on the Yangtze,
that his exploits take their most dangerous turn. After being wounded in a
bandit attack on the Ho-a-Haing during which his friend Martin, the ship's
chief engineer, is killed, Moore decides he's had enough of life on the
pirate-ridden river and prepares to quit the country.
Instead, however, he winds up drunk and broke in Shanghai; his pockets empty
and brain soaked in alcohol, he signs on as engineer and the only white man on
a Chinese vessel that, it turns out, is smuggling arms and opium.
Moore's "employment" is actually a kidnapping from which he eventually escapes
by pouring petrol on the floor of the engine room and blowing up the ship,
jumping overboard and then undertaking a three-week swim-cum-trek downriver to
Hankou.
Moore's China adventures appear in the last - and by far the most brutal and
harrowing - of the book's three parts. Here he writes of shooting (and
apparently killing) a Chinese peasant boy who spat at him and of wielding a
shovel to split the head of another "greaser" who slapped him across the face
with a "sweat rag".
The carnage left on the Ho-a-Haing after the bandit attack, which the wounded
Moore survives by hiding in a bathtub, is another vivid reminder of lawlessness
along the Yangtze during this era.
Reminiscing about his escapades in China, Moore also recounts entertaining
interludes with his English soul mate, Mitchell, who - incredibly - reveals
himself to be even more dissolute, irresponsible and amoral than Moore.
Unfortunately, all of these extraordinary adventures and misadventures are
frequently undermined by the Scotsman's quite ordinary prose and sometimes
downright dim-witted reflections.
In this passage describing his early days on the Ho-a-Haing, for example, Moore
regrets sharing his whisky with the Chinese captain:
I did not know at
this time that the way you must treat a Chinaman is to give him a kick in the
pants, so I thought they were just like other human beings. But it seems you
could not have any prestige in China if you treated a Chinaman like a human
being ...
When, drunk on samshu, Moore steals a god from
a Chinese temple, he is shocked by the anger of the temple priest, who summons
a crowd and comes after him.
"This is what comes of going to uncivilized parts," Moore tells himself, later
adding: "I never would have taken [the god] if I had known how the Chinese do
not seem to be able to see when a thing is done for a joke. They have not any
sense of humor like us."
But Moore does offer this compliment to the Chinese: "If you are a white man
and you smoke opium it is sure to ruin your work career. But a Chinaman can
take it and it will not affect his work."
In the end, it is abundantly clear that Towasser, despite his punctilious
annotations of the text, has not disinterred an overlooked classic. But he has
resurrected a one-time author whose ignorance, rakishness and lack of
conscience are indicative of his time. Often extraordinary, however, are his
adventures.
Don't Call Me a Crook! A Scotsman's Tale of World Travel, Whisky and Crime
by Bob Moore. Dissident Books (May 1, 2009). ISBN-10: 0977378802. Price
US$14.95, 256 pages.
Kent Ewing is a Hong Kong-based teacher and writer. He can be reached at
kewing@hkis.edu.hk.
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Indeed,
before being rescued by Towasser, Moore's rambunctious memoir was threatened
with extinction: After coming across the book during one of his treasure hunts
in cob-webbed corners of the New York Public Library, the publisher searched
the world and could find only four other copies extant. In a six-page
introduction to Moore's salty tale, Towasser recounts his delight upon reading
its opening page and, once he had finished the book, his conviction that he had
exhumed a lost classic.
