IS IT BETTER to improve the life of just one homeless person than donate millions to the arts?  This is the question puzzling The Culling’s Selwyn Stanfield, a billionaire media mogul who has grown tired of life in New York’s fast lane and talks about retiring to Katmandu.  After years of philanthropy fueled by his success in developing global markets, Selwyn decides to befriend-- and then employ-- a panhandler named John, whom the mogul has ignored guiltily for months at the door of the local ATM.  But John turns out to be the wrong choice.

• The Culling (Kindle Edition), by Stephen Greco, on Amazon.com

The Culling is also available in print edition, on Amazon.com.

Fast paced, with dark, dry humor, The Culling tell of John’s transformation from Salvation Army to Prada.  At first John appears to fit into the bold-face lifestyle enjoyed by Selwyn and his wife, MaryAnn, a well-connected art dealer.  The former panhandler charms ladies and gentlemen alike, and demonstrates street savvy that serves him well in Selwyn’s business.  But then, after befriending Selwyn’s business partners and seducing MaryAnn, John’s past catches up with him— a grim past of drugs, family violence, and the inner sanctum at Studio 54.  By the end of the story Selwyn is missing and may or may not have decamped for the life of an ascetic in Katmandu. 

Blending narrative subtlety with self-reflexive irony, The Culling works on two levels.  First, it is the drama of one human being trying to help another. On another level, the novel is a commentary on the ability of good— and good business-- to propagate itself in the modern world.  Like anti-heroes from Balzac and Highsmith, John seduces the reader into empathizing with him even as his actions defy moral standards.

 Stephen Greco (photo by Payam Rahimian)

Greco is the author of two other novels, also available on Amazon.com:

• Dreadnought

Spare, dry, and flecked with dark humor, Dreadnought centers on a fictional American corporation selling goods and services to a global youth market of a billion souls.   Like Mount Fuji in Hokusai's Thirty-Six Views, the Dreadnought corporation – creator of "the biggest brand in history" – is visible directly or obliquely in each of these interrelated stories, which tell of who wins and who loses when young consumers and creative talent are stalked by a Big Brand of unprecedented power.  Hint: Everybody loses-- but the party’s fun while it lasts.

• Other People’s Prayers

How big can a media deal be?  Can Hollywood improve the condition of humanity even a little bit, with a feel-good movie designed to reach every screen on the planet?  Other People’s Prayers tells the tale of a five powerful individuals who intend to make “the biggest movie ever,” meant to inspire the entire world with hope.  The result, however, is the murder of one of the movie’s champions.  Continuing the story begun in Stephen Greco’s The Culling-- of John Statella, the handsome, seductive panhandler-turned-financial mogul—Other People’s Prayers tells of a dream project gone wrong.