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“Don’t Call Me a Crook! A Scotsman’s Tale of World Travel, Whisky, and Crime, by Bob Moore.
Christopher E wrote this review Tuesday, October 27 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
Dissident Books, New York.
www.dissidentbooks.com
The first two parts of this book span three continents and twenty years of Bob Moore’s life and they define for the rest of time a single word: ‘wastrel’. The third and final part, when Moore arrives in China, undoes that effort with the introduction of his limey friend Mitchell, who plumbs depths even Moore cannot reach. The earlier ‘reminiscences’ are always engaging and sometimes amusing, if marred by moments that are downright unbelievable. But the account of China is authentic, horrible, unforgettable – something you have to read.
Don’t Call Me a Crook! was first published in 1935. Moore died two years later of ‘acute alcohol gastritis’ aged 38; a literary death, perhaps, for a Glaswegian marine engineer. The book is entirely autobiographical and reading it, as the editor points out, is like listening to Moore himself. Or rather, it is like listening to Moore read aloud what he has written, because the transition to the page is marked by slight shifts towards formality. No contractions, no accent, no pause for breath. It takes about two pages to get used to this style, then Moore’s voice begins to live inside your head and you can’t get free. Seeing the world through his eyes is to see the underlying moral chaos all around, the havoc the male animal wreaks everywhere in pursuit of sex and money.
Though Moore would like to think he’s forever striking out on a new adventure and kicking over his traces, never letting responsibilities get the upper hand, never letting conformity best him, he is actually forever on the run, and is beaten by circumstance at every turn. Because he seldom sees things this way he seldom feels defeated, but at the same time he never learns. On the boat over to America he outwits a diamond dealer and collects fourteen gems worth enough capital to change his life. He swiftly offloads them in Al Capone’s Chicago without being double-crossed or chopped up by gangsters. Whether it’s wholly true or not the story’s wish-fulfilment is significant. After such a triumph, what does he do? He takes the sleeper to New York and gets pissed. He blows the roll. Within months he’s broke again, back on the street, hungry for another break.
There are readers who will see something heroic in this: here’s a working man who wants to seize what life has to offer with both hands, a chancer who won’t ‘let the buggers grind him down’ and so on. But the reality the book describes when Moore has the chance to live life to the full is just swank hotels, getting pissed, and wining and dining women who are either prostitutes or who trade in similar fashion. This is the tops: plenty of Scotch, a good fuck, and hangovers so bad you can’t even mention them. One of the most ironic episodes of the book comes in the second section where Moore has, by his own account, “the best job I ever had in my life”. He has fluked his way onto a millionaire’s yacht as chief engineer. (A millionaire, incidentally, who is so mean-spirited he steals his lobsters from fishermen’s lobster pots.) Moore is quite capable of doing the chief engineer’s job, in fact he’s the most capable seaman on the boat and he saves the day a couple of times. The irony of this episode is that the millionaire, his sons and their friends live life as Moore does when he’s in the money: they remain pissed all day and entertain parties of Ziegfeld Follies on and below deck. There are drug fuelled orgies. A girl dives overboard and drowns. The yacht rocks.
Moore holds these millionaire wastrels in contempt, and quite rightly so, but if he had their money, what else would he do?
China wasn’t roaring in quite the same way as America around this time.
Moore’s paraffin boat on the Yangtse has armour plating to stop the bandits, who can mass in armies thousands strong. When they finally strike, by night, the crew, including Moore, is ready for them with steam hoses fixed to the ship’s boilers. They scald the screaming bandits from the deck into the river, where the current drags them to their deaths. By day, gangs of coolies haul shipping through the Three Gorges when the current is too strong. Moore sees a man fall from the gang down the mountain and into the river. No one even turns round. In a village he visits he sees women shuffling with bound feet – this is just 80 years ago – and there’s a live pornography show: a young woman is mutilated at the stake for adultery. Part of the excitement is cutting off her breasts. (This is not described: to his credit Moore doesn’t dwell on such things.) In an idle moment on deck he watches the body of a young girl being dragged up the bank by a dog. This is unmistakably an eye-witness account. You feel the cold of the gorges, the force of the current that can hold a steamer at Dead Slow with its engines Full Ahead, and you sense the struggle on the banks for a scrap of food, a few cents, or some opium to take away the pain of living in such circumstances.
There’s worse to come for Moore on the Yangtse. Egged on by a panicky Mitchell he shoots a boy in self-defence. In an engine room brawl he fells a man with a shovel, cleaves his skull open and kills him. Afterwards he’s invited on deck for a talk with the opium-smoking Chinese captain. He has earned respect.
As the Yangtse voyage closes we arrive at the last pages of the book. There isn’t much dialogue in Moore’s writing, but a precious snippet occurs here. You will have loathed or enjoyed Mitchell, depending on your sense of humour, but here he says something important no matter how you take him. Moore, who has rescued and bailed out Mitchell so many times, comes to the house of a Polish woman in Shanghai to fetch his friend aboard for their return to Glasgow. Mitchell is lying down drunk, of course. One eye open.
He’s changed his mind. He’s deserting Moore again. He no longer wants to go back.
“I’ve only got me mother and she’s in Canada . . . Go ‘way and leave me . . . Get away . . . . . I’ve only got me mother in the world . . .”
Dear Old Mum. Neither man has ever formed a lasting relationship with anyone except his mum, which of course is a relationship he didn’t form at all. Moore has reached out to Mitchell again and again, and has been burned and betrayed without fail. Monstrously betrayed. In these last pages Moore searches for Mitchell one last time. His efforts produce the most unforgettable scene of the book, a scene that reverberates with so much that has gone before.
Mitchell’s ship was moored away from the dock and the tide was out. Some distance across the mud there’s a sampan. Moore summoned the owner across the flats by holding up a shiny coin. The owner struggled through the mud – a bad sign. They started out towards the sampan but the mud was too deep and treacherous and Moore decided to give up the idea. He turned back. But such was the Chinese man’s desperation to own that coin, he offered to carry Moore over the mud. They hadn’t got far when they started to sink. Moore held on tight to his mount. The man sank deeper under his weight. What happens next can only be described in the author’s own words.
It is something you have to read.
”
“a ribald riot.”
Paul D Brazill wrote this review Saturday, October 17 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“It is a pity there are getting to be so many places that I can never go back to, but all the same, I do not think it is much fun a man being respectable all his life."
IYamVixenBooks wrote this review Wednesday, July 8 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
So begins the tale of Bob Moore, a man from Glasgow, Scotland in the 1920's. Bob was a marine engineer by trade and a thief, womaniser, diamond smuggler, gunrunner, liar, drunk ne'er do well by choice. He seized opportunities as they came and generally came up smelling semi-rose like from almost all altercations. He traveled the world and never seemed able to go back where he'd been due to misunderstandings or broken hearted women or mugs who would like to see him dead.
I'd like to think I'd hate to be around this guy, but I have a weakness for Scottish accents and charm, so I would likely have been suckered into something by Bob. He was able to 'justify' all of his actions as they happened, never being feeling at fault for the most part, even when murder occurred. It was always justifiable in his mind and seemingly casually mentioned to the reader.
I wish I knew what caused Bob to write his 'true autobiography' as he calls it. Was it suggested or did he feel the need to expound and boast of his adventures and reminiscences.
Four 'blameless' scoundrel beans.....
”
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