Stacy Schiff details the biographer’s tribulations, triumphs, obsessions

Print Story | Email Story
Adams native and Pulitzer prize-winning biographer Stacy Schiff recounted the biographer’s tribulations and triumphs, obsessions and satisfactions to a full house as a preview for the Edith Wharton Women of Achievement Lecture Series. Speaking Monday at Seven Hills Inn in Lenox, Schiff spoke on “Getting a Life: On the Trail of Véra Nabokov and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry,” describing the quest that led from fierce and ancient mistresses to elusive hoards of archives with the aim, always, of arriving at a complex, shaded portrait of her subject. And it is a quest that demands the qualities of a detective and a courtier, a psychologist and a fencing master. Schiff is the author of Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), which was awarded the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. Her second book was Saint-Exupéry: A Biography, a finalist for the 1995 Pulitzer Prize and winner of numerous European awards. She is currently working on a biography of Benjamin Franklin’s years representing the fledgling American republic in France. Schiff, a 1982 Williams College graduate, told her audience how crucial the Berkshires were in informing her literary career. She recalled the former Adams Free Library Librarian Elizabeth Toohey “kicking me out of the adult reading room” when Schiff was 8 or 9 years old, an experience that “taught me that books can be thrilling and illicit.” Working in the New York Public Library as part of a group of biographers, she noted that “as a group, it was 10 years since most of us had published a book, and most of our literary obsessions outlasted our marriages — in one case, two marriages — and we outlasted the editors we started with.” “You carry your subject around with you for five, 10 or 15 years,” she said. “You go to their favorite haunts and museums. One biographer went around floating in a cloud of her subject’s favorite perfume. You take their obsessions to be your own.” After working on the life of Saint-Exupéry, the aviator and author best known in the U.S. for the classic The Little Prince, Schiff said, “I can tell you how to pilot three kinds of airplanes, none of them, fortunately, produced after the 1930s.” She once, she said, consulted a therapist on Saint-Exupéry’s behalf for information about a sexual practice he engaged in. Saint-Exupéry, she said, “smoked too much, he whined ... and he overstayed his welcome.” And when at last the biographer finishes the book, she said, there is the adjustment that accompanies “learning how to make do without your biographical partner. It’s the literary equivalent of walking into the junior high school cafeteria alone.” When she was considering Véra Nabokov as a subject, Schiff was told by a Nabokov family friend that she would be trying to write “the life of the Cheshire Cat,” the Lewis Carroll character that recedes until only the grin remains. Schiff told of her dismay upon learning, after she had assured her editor that she would be using them, that Mrs. Nabokov “had destroyed all her letters to her husband.” While she was writing the book, it was her dream that they would reappear. Now, she said, “It is my nightmare.” In writing her book on Véra, whom she called “the master of the feint,” Schiff set out to find letters Nabokov had written his lover in 1937, letters that the present owner might, just might, let her see. However, annoyed that she realized his identity, forbidden from the outset, the owner withheld them. Their meeting in the Plaza Athenée bar left her with no letters and the bill. “Rarely have I so felt the burden of being a woman, an American, and not a cigar-smoker,” she said. A mistress of Saint-Exupéry made the stringent condition that Schiff could either name her, or speak with her on the condition that she, the longtime mistress, see any pages on which she appeared. Schiff said that sharing with this woman the results of her, Schiff’s, explorations in U.S. State Department archives “did wonders for our relationship.” Schiff deftly played one ancient mistress against another, in hopes of eliciting information, much as a bridge player tries to pry loose a hovering queen. A Romanian artist, a close friend of Saint-Exupéry, turned out to be Mrs. Saul Steinberg, the widow of the artist, living nine blocks from Schiff on New York City’s Upper West Side. “It took me four years to find her,” said Schiff. Not only does the biographer become enmeshed in the subject, she said. “You’re close to the fairy dust. But the biographer also learns things about his predecessor that he’d rather not know.” Schiff’s quest led her to Nabokov letters reposing in a “dusty armoire in Queens under a pile of girdle hardware,” whose owner had jilted the young Nabokov in 1923. And, after a frantic appeal to Nabokov biographer Brian Boyd in New Zealand for a description of the one diary Véra Nabokov kept in 1957, finding the precious item — a blue-bound notebook with a gold clasp — amid a mass of material, her fencing with Dmitri Nabokov — Véra and Vladimir Nabokov’s son — over the treasure. The pages of that diary, said Schiff, gave her the first picture she had of Véra as “a woman capable of regret.” After first demanding that he read the diary first, Dmitri Nabokov seemed to have forgotten about it over dinner at a Chinese restaurant. Then, in the early morning hours, he called Schiff in a panic because the door had been left unlocked. Although he did not demand the diary’s return, Schiff said she may have been “the first person in history to have bribed a hotel clerk to use a copying machine at 5 a.m.” Letters figured in another episode, as Schiff gradually realized that a Saint-Exupéry family friend was leaving her alone with letters designated as not to be read, with the expectation that she would, in fact, read them. “Sources talk for a reason,” she said. “It’s important to know why they talk because that will color their material.” And, she noted, “apocrypha has staying power.” “Facts are slippery and memories faulty,” she said. “You need to be conscious of the relativity of it all. Things are never as they seem. You tell what you can and speculate intelligently about the rest.” The choice of Véra, she said, stemmed from her wish to deal with family dynamics, and, was “a harder book to write for that reason.” To research for Véra, Schiff said, she engaged a translator rather than start learning Russian, an approach she will not repeat. Although her contacts with the Nabokov son, Dmitri, are fewer — “I call him on his birthday, on his parents’ anniversary” — during the book’s writing those contacts were much more frequent. “I no longer need him to sign off on what I’ve written,” she said. “We’ve lost the common goal, so the need to connect is not as pressing. But I feel we have given birth to the past together.” The Schiff family ran Schiff’s Clothing store on Park Street in Adams for many years. The shop was founded by her great-grandfather in 1897, and was closed two years ago by her brother and sister-in-law Gary and Arlene Schiff. Her mother, Ellen, taught French and comparative literature at the former North Adams State College until her retirement. She is also the daughter of the late Morton Schiff. She has three young children. The Edith Wharton Women of Achievement series opens Monday, July 2, at 4 p.m. with a talk by Reeve Lindbergh on her mother, Anne Morrow Lindbergh.
Share
If you would like to contribute information on this article, contact us at info@iberkshires.com.

Spectrum Cable Hearing Set in North Adams

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — A public hearing for the renewal of the cable television contract for four North Berkshire communities will be held on Wednesday, April 24, at 6 p.m. at City Hall. 
 
The 10-year contract with Spectrum/Charter Communications will cover the city of North Adams and the towns of Adams, Cheshire and Clarksburg. 
 
The hearing in Council Chambers is open to residents of all four communities. In-person attendance is encouraged but a remote option is available here via Zoom. 
 
Topics covered during the hearing will include the future of cable-related community needs and interests (community television) and performance of the operator under the cable license. It does not include internet or other provided services. 
 
The hearing is required under state law as part of the contract renewal process. Any documents or reports relating to the contract can be obtained through the governmental offices of each community.  
View Full Story

More North Adams Stories

Community News
image description

Scenic Flight Group Setting Up at North Adams Airport

Community News
A & E
image description

Weekend Outlook: Spring Celebrations, Clean-ups, and More

A & E
A & E
image description

Annual Teen Invitational Draws More Than 300 Submissions

A & E
Community News
image description

North Adams to Begin Study of Veterans Memorial Bridge...

Community News
Community News
image description

Veteran Spotlight: Army Sgt. Al DiMuzio

Community News
Business
image description

MountainOne Marks 175 Years Since Founding

Business
Latest Stories
Previous Next

What's Trending?