An excerpt from Great White Male
Art just loves to imitate life, you know?
If you’ve been following this newsletter with some interest, if you know me in person, or if you happen to have read the Winter 2025 issue of The Point, you most likely know that I’m writing a novel I’m calling Great White Male. You may even know that this novel is about gender, deception, coercion, small town cults, and mortgaging one’s soul for one’s art.
I don’t know about you, subscriber, but when I’m drafting a novel I tend to write in discursive loops, generating tons of character backstory that may or may not make it into the final product. Today, I’d love to share some of those early pages with you — in particular, a loop-de-loop about being young and gay and convinced you’ve found your true love when maybe you haven’t.
This book, like any, has been both a labor and a joy to write, and I’m so lucky to have had friends and some brilliant industry professionals1 willing to bear witness to it at this nascent stage. Now, I’m excited to share this excerpt with paid subscribers, plus a little teaser playlist I’ve made for the novel. Thank you for your generous support of The Cosmic Cheeto! The excerpt is beneath the picture of the tree-lined path below.
Not a paid subscriber, but considering becoming one? Well what the heck, maybe it’s time for a little promotion! Here’s what to do:
-Upgrade your subscription
-Write 1 paragraph on the topic “My Favorite Con”
-Send proof of purchase + your paragraph to me at frumkinr@gmail.com with Great White Male Promo in the subject line!
3 Very Nice Indeed Winners (upgrade to $5/month plan and gift a friend one month paid): A signed and inscribed copy of either Bugsy, Confidence, or The Comedown + a small thank-you gift!
2 Regular-Sized Rudy Winners (upgrade to $50/year plan): A 20-minute “Ask Me Anything About the Writing Life” Zoom session!
2 King-Sized Rudy Winners (upgrade to the $80/year founding membership): Personalized feedback on a piece of fiction, nonfiction, or criticism of 4,000 words or less!
1 Grand Prize Winner! ($80/year founding membership and gift a friend a $50/year membership): Personalized feedback on a piece of fiction, nonfiction, or criticism of 4,000 words or less + a 30-minute feedback Zoom session + this stunning portrait of Homer Simpson you see below, which I drew in 2005 and remain very proud of.
Good luck and thank you all so much for your support! Your generosity makes The Cosmic Cheeto possible!
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Great White Male
“Art Camp”
Cornwall was indeed as wooded and beautiful as it had looked in the pictures online, and the campus seemed to be a hyper-concentrated subsection of that beauty. We spent a couple days being “oriented” by the surprisingly young-looking Fenelon Writers’ Institute students: here were the spacious classrooms in which our workshops would be held, and here were the cubbies from which we’d retrieve workshop stories, and here was the glass-ceilinged common room in which we’d welcome a famous YA novelist for a reading in a few weeks. Though the FWI students who would be our workshop leaders all looked much younger than my parents, they seemed to know themselves in ways other adults didn’t. I could sense a quiet awareness of their own greatness, the historic lives awaiting them.
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