Painter becomes storyteller: Keith Keller interview
By Bill Pearlman, March 23, 2007

PEN’s New Voices in Literature reading series
Keith Keller
Fri, Mar 30, 4pm
Sala Quetzal, Biblioteca Pública
Insurgentes 25
By donation

We’re sitting in the patio of Keith Keller’s mall—art school, hotel, home, studio—on Ancha de San Antonio, and we’re investigating Keith’s writing in light of a long life as a painter. Keith is reading from his stories in San Miguel’s PEN’s New Voices in Literature Series on March 30, at the Sala Quetzal, 4 pm. 

Bill: So tell me, what does writing give you that is different from painting?

Keith: I’ve always liked telling stories. Rita Torlin, a painter, once said that I am a storyteller in pictures. My paintings have told stories through brushstroke, juxtaposition of colors, and illusion of form. Painting in the old days was realistic, you painted a horse that looked just like a horse. But the impressionists and cubists and we moderns found out that paint is a language: you describe the horse, distort it, by leaving out realism and you force people to pay attention…

Bill: And so back to this question of writing. What direction do you see your writing going in comparison to your painting?

Keith: Both are a chance to record life for others to see. I had a relative Alonzo Smith, who fought in the American Revolution, and he recorded some of his life in writing. I want to do the same. The stories are like a diary. La Jerga has given me a chance to write a monthly story, and the editor, Dan, has been very encouraging. I told about my life in various places—Africa, where I was in the Peace Corps in Togo, Paterson, New Jersey, New York City, and San Miguel. I took the settings and 90 percent of the stories are based on real events. 

As for the stories themselves, once a story gets rolling, I am entertained. Paint is more stream of consciousness for me, and the writing is concrete…The painter Balthus was asked to write an intro to his work for a big retrospective and he said to the inquirer: ‘Tell people Balthus made these and people should look at them…’

Bill: So you say the writing is more concrete.

Keith: Yes. I get to speak directly to the reader, address events with a clearer voice than in the painting. In the paintings, everybody will have her own interpretation…But the writing is really my story, and I get a lot of facts from memory. But I have no pretensions as to what I’m doing. I’m a storyteller. I’ve been reading O’Henry’s stories lately, and he’s writing about shopgirls, waitresses, regular people—his stories often go in a circle. He’s clever with words, whereas I have a more straightforward method. I try to remove ego from my stories. 

Bill: What about your San Miguel stories, what is particular about those?

Keith: People are generally happy in San Miguel. It’s like a big cruise ship…And the art scene has changed here: there are better artists, more galleries. But I also write about a side of San Miguel most people don’t know, a sort of marginal life that was here earlier in my 20-year stay here. I talk about SMA’s bohemian history, the bizarre and eccentric people who have lived here…

Bill: Let’s go back for a moment to your own history. Can you start at the beginning and tell us a little about your own historical trajectory of places?

Keith: I grew up in Lynn, Massachusetts in an all black neighborhood. Later we moved to Marblehead. Later I lived in Paterson, Togo in the Peace Corps, New York City for 10 years, San Miguel for 20 years. I started a martial arts school after getting a black belt in Tae Kwan Do.

Bill: What has kept you in San Miguel for so long?

Keith: I couldn’t afford to leave. I arrived here with US$200. Lately, thanks mostly to a larger student base, my fortunes have changed. La Escuela has been popular, and I like to teach. I can teach anyone to draw and paint. People come to the school and say ‘I can’t draw a straight line.’ Nobody can. But learning to draw and paint makes people happy, and I think that’s good. I also like our setup here—we have a guest house, I teach, paint and live here and I’m grateful for our good fortunes.

Bill: What were the major influences on your own work. There’s a size to your figures that reminds me a little of the Weimar era, with Beckmann, Grosz and Dix.

Keith: There’s some of that, but I was very close to New York’s Ash Can School—(M)painters like Reginald Marsh, Jack Levine—they painted girlfriends, cafes, Coney Island. I guess I’m in the tradition of New York State Modern Art, with themes drawn from all the places I’ve lived, including San Miguel.

Bill: What would you want the people of San Miguel to know about your reading on March 30th?

Keith: I’m hopeful people will listen, enjoy the reading, not be bored. 

(Keith then broke into a laughter, and paraphrasing Balthus:)

Tell them Keith Keller wrote these stories and now come and listen to them!

Global Justice panel discussion and book review

Global Class War
With Cliff DuRand and Betsy Bowman
Wed, Mar 28, 10:30am
Sala Quetzal
Biblioteca Pública
Insurgentes 25
50 pesos 

Global class war

Occasionally a book comes along that speaks with such clarity that it illuminates a reality that has long been right in front of us but which was only dimly perceived before. Jeff Faux’s The Global Class War is such a book. It enables us to look in a different way at the globalizing economy, free trade, and soaring corporate profits on the one hand, and on the other, deteriorating standards of living for working Americans and the continuing (and deepening) poverty of most of the world’s people. 

Jeff Faux, founder and former president of the Economic Policy Institute, connects these dots to reveal the big picture of the class war that has gone from allowing the benefits of capitalism to be dispersed somewhat evenly and now marches around the globe in search of cheap labor and resources to fuel corporate profits.

This is the provocative thesis that will be discussed by Cliff DuRand and Betsy Bowman, founders of the Center for Global Justice. They also critically review the book and the class project known as globalization. 

The media language we use to talk to each other about globalization hides its class structure. The press consistently talks about national “interest” without defining who exactly is getting what. Thus, American workers are told that the “Chinese” are taking their jobs. But the China threat is, in fact, another global business partnership—this one between commissars who supply the cheap labor and the US and other foreign capitalists who supply the technology and two-thirds of the capital used to finance China’s exports. The rest of the world calls this “neoliberalism,” a term unknown among America’s media “internationalists.”

Yet neoliberalism is the reigning philosophy of the global elite who held their annual meeting last month in the plush mountain resort of Davos, Switzerland. Hosted by the 

great global corporations (Citigroup, Siemens, Microsoft, Nestlé, etc.), some 2000 CEOs, prominent politicians (including Mexico’s new president Calderon), pundits and international bureaucrats networked over great food, fine wine, good skiing and cozy evenings by the fire contemplating the world’s future. This is not a secret cabal; journalists issued daily reports on the wit and informal charm of our financial betters. Rather, it is like the political convention of those who manage the global economy. Jeff Faux calls it the Party of Davos.

He shows how NAFTA, the WTO and similar “free trade” agreements are really deals among the global elite establishing “the constitution of a single global economy” that codifies a Bill of Rights that protects just one kind of citizen—the large transnational corporation. At the same time it prohibits effective protections for workers, consumers and the environment.

Whether you have read Faux’s book or not, whether you agree with his point of view or not, come join the discussion Wednesday morning. You may find that you will see the world in a different light.