The Culling

by Stephen Greco

Is it better to improve the life of just one homeless person than donate millions to the arts? This is the question puzzling 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. 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 gone to 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.

306 pages, Paperback

First published December 5, 2009

About the author

Stephen Greco is Editorial Director of InsideRisk and Editor-at-Large of the magazine Upstate Diary. He has contributed to and/or served as editor for Air Mail, Elle Décor, Interview, MTV online, New York, the New York Times, Opera News, Stagebill, Trace, and the Village Voice, among others. Greco is author of the novel Now and Yesterday (Kensington, 2014). His most recent novel, Such Good Friends, based on the friendship of Truman Capote and Lee Radziwill, published by Kensington in May, 2023.

For the stage, Greco has written Peter and the Wolf in Hollywood, an orchestral-theatrical work from Giants Are Small, the partnership of Edouard Getaz and Doug Fitch, that premiered at the Kennedy Center in 2017. With Fitch, Greco has written the multi-media works How Did We…? (2014; University of Buffalo Center for the Arts) and Punkitititi/Breakfast Included (2020; Salzburg Marionette Theater, Salzburg Mozarteum). Greco wrote the libretto for the Victoria Bond opera How Gulliver Returned Home in a Manner that was Very Not Direct, and is working on musical theater projects with composers Scott Wheeler and Douglas Cuomo.

Among the celebrity interviews that Greco has done for various publications are Maya Angelou, Geoffrey Beene, Joan Juliet Buck, Trisha Brown, DJ Cam, Wes Craven, Quentin Crisp. Merce Cunningham, Diane von Furstenberg, Frank Gehry, Allen Ginsberg, Marcelo Gomes, Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, Cynthia Gregory, Arianna Huffington, Patti LuPone, Gelsey Kirkland, Spike Lee, Marilyn Minter, Errol Morris, Jane Moss, Nana Mouskouri, Mark Morris, Mike Nichols, Yoko Ono, Sir Peter Pears, Ned Rorem, Andre Leon Talley, Donald Trump, and Kehinde Wiley.

Greco lives in Brooklyn, New York.


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AUTHOR PHOTO BY DAVID A. PEREZ