A Literary Subversive

Angus Wong, ghostwriter, vividly recalled the day his creative writing professor mocked his writing for being derivative. Used his short story about his childhood in Hong Kong as an example of what not to do for the class. Isn’t everyone’s life derivative of everyone and everything that has come before?

He cracked open a second bottle of Pinot Grigio, the wonderfully crisp Italian white wine which fueled his best work. Pouring a generous glass, brimming over, he grinned. Tonight was a celebration. His latest title, Daniel Strobl–Microsoft Master of Middle Management, was complete.

With a sigh, he began drafting the final invoice:

“Dear Dan, I’ve completed your riveting memoir chronicling your stunning rise within Microsoft’s consumer product marketing division. Your skillful handling of weekly team status meetings will inspire young people everywhere. Once you’ve sent the second installment of the $30,000 authorship fee, I’ll forward the draft to the publisher, and it should top the bestseller lists this summer.”

The book was as dull as an accounting textbook crossed with a TED talk, but Angus knew the game—inflate the client’s ego, cash in the payment.

His phone immediately buzzed. “Dude! You’re a legend,” Dan gushed. “The book is amazing. I’m interviewing for a VP job at Google this week. If I land it, I’ll get you a spot as my right-hand man! With a big salary.”

These sort of promises from clients were as reliable as emails from Nigerian princes. The job would never materialize, and if it did, Angus would be the first to be thrown to the wolves if profits went south. His superior vocabulary and grammar skills would be seen as a threat to higher management. Most of the books about corporate backstabbing were written by him, and he knew the game.

“Thank you, Dan. I’ll think about it. Remember to pitch me to Satya Nadella if he needs a writer,” Angus replied. “I’ve got another call coming in… client confidentiality, I can’t say who. Got to go.”

A ghostwriter always needs to be working on their next paycheck. He filled up his glass.

Staring out at Brooklyn’s dark nighttime streets, his mind drifted. Faces appeared in his mind. The corporate executives he wrote for, they all looked straight out of Andor’s Imperial ranks, square-jawed clones projecting confidence while hiding fear.

It contrasted with himself—fearless, non-conformist, with a PolySci degree from Brown and a firm understanding of nonviolent revolution. With a shelf of bestselling memoirs at Barnes & Noble, he was the rebel spy hiding in plain sight. He even occasionally slipped queer coded Easter eggs into his conservative tycoons’ autobiographies just to flex his power.

Luthen Rael peddled ersatz antiquities in Andor, in Brooklyn, he wrote shamelessly self-aggrandizing memoirs.

With Dan Strobl’s memoir out of his head and white wine coursing through his veins, Angus opened the Scrivener tab holding his own novel’s draft, feeling ready to unleash his creativity. The book was a sprawling Chinese-American family saga, and he was on Chapter 2–Childhood. He wrote his story:

“Growing up in the bustling heart of Hong Kong, I woke each morning to the aroma of my grandmother’s steaming congee, a recipe she swore would ‘make me strong.’ My parents, victims of the Cultural Revolution, drilled me in multiplication tables while I ate chopsticks full of pickled vegetables. They didn’t want me to relive their own childhood and the education they had lost. Every night, my dad drowned himself in chinese vodka to soothe his sorrow.”

“After school, I balanced piano lessons with Chinese calligraphy classes, where a stern teacher called me ‘little dragon’ despite my lack of fire. I didn’t know then that it was dyslexia that scrambled the character strokes in my mind. Family gatherings were a cacophony of mahjong tiles and relatives arguing over dumplings. Meanwhile, I watched American cartoons, and dreamed of the freedom in America. I was a soul torn between two worlds. Then at 19, my true love, Mei-Ling, moved to Chengdu to marry a man she did not know. From that moment, I knew my heart would never truly be still.”

Angus paused, grimacing at the screen. It was all true. His truth. But it was also a parade of clichés—every trope Margo had railed against when she taught the class the now infamous list: The 10 Tropes of Memoir Writing That Should Be Flushed Down the Toilet.

The “childhood struggle” trope, check.

The “child of an alcoholic survival tale” 99.99% of children of alcoholics survive, and so did he, he muttered, thinking of Oprah’s story and so many other memoirs.

The “dyslexia-to-success” arc. Hello, Bradley Cooper.

The “young love lost” sob story.

Each chapter would be a summary of an average life, one lived by billions of others, each chapter tied up with a neat resolution and aphorism in the last paragraph.

“Your story needs a point,” Professor Margo said. “A memoir isn’t a diary. It’s a story with a purpose, something readers can connect to. Nobody cares about you until something happens.”

In his mind, the penny dropped. His fingers hovered over the keyboard while he opened a new tab.

He would subvert the tropes.

Top on his list. The “I can’t believe I went to Harvard” humblebrag, JD Vance, Barack Obama, Natalie Portman. From Brown to Bust, would be his story.

The “Deep down, I’m vulnerable” trope. Dyslexia as a crutch for bad behavior, from Tom Cruise, Richard Branson, Barack Obama (again). He would have a superpower, not a crutch.

And the obligatory ⅔ mark “I found God, yoga, or a vegan diet” lecture. Woody Harrelson, shove your chamomile tea up a kangaroo’s behind, he chuckled. His character would eat Peking Duck and declare God is Dead in Chapter 13.

He would turn his memoir into fiction, transforming memoir cliches into high literary fiction. Suddenly, words began to flow like IPA at a Brooklyn craft beer bar.

“The chili sauce at Haidilao erupted like a volcanic apocalypse on my pristine white pants just as the assassin’s bullet whizzed past my ear, shattering the hot pot and sending chopsticks flying. My grandmothers’ congee recipe—etched into a microchip implanted in my earlobe—was the real target, a culinary code the cabal would kill for. I wasn’t torn between two worlds; I was running from both, a Chinese-American fixer on the run with a price on my head, my calligraphy skills now used forging passports instead of art.”

This was better. Just cliffhangers, chaos, something happening.

Angus leaned back, sipped his Pinot, and listened to the din of Brooklyn’s traffic below his apartment. He poured another glass. He was a revolutionary. An Andor rebel. His novel was alive, the tropes boldly subverted. Soon, he wouldn’t need to write other people’s stories. He would write his own story and change the world.

As Angus sipped his crisp white Pinot Grigio, his phone buzzed to life with a text from Harper Bollin’s lawyer: “To match market trends, we need a rewrite on Joe Biden–A Life in Full, from celebratory to conspiratorial by next Friday, or we sue for breach of contract. Thank you for your understanding.”

His stomach churned—the $30,000 advance he received wouldn’t cover legal fees, and the NYT Book Review would mock him if he didn’t roll over.

He replied: “You’ll have it by Thursday.”