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.

Healey Makes Berkshire Campaign Swing: 'I Stand With You'

By Tammy Daniels & Sabrina DammsiBerkshires Staff

North Adams Mayor Jennifer Macksey says she endorses Healey and Kim Driscoll '150 percent' as they pursue a second term as governor and lieutenant governor, respectively. 
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Maura Healey was in the Berkshires on Monday to rally support for a second four-year term as governor. She spoke at a meet and greet on Main Street, visited small businesses on North Street in Pittsfield, and planned to stop in Great Barrington on Tuesday.
 
Speaking with dozens of supporters at the new Main & Mill restaurant, the Democrat ticked off successes over her term and challenges ahead in education, energy, healthcare and housing.
 
"I go around the state and I talk to colleagues around the country. People are hurting. You know, they can't afford gas, groceries, rent. Everything it seems has gotten more expensive," she said. "We got a president who continues to cut and make things more expensive and more difficult for all of us.
 
"I mean, except for the very rich and the very powerful, it didn't work out really well for a lot of people across this country right now, which is why state leadership I think, is all the more important."
 
Mayor Jennifer Macksey, who hosted the meet and greet, said Healey "gets what it is to grow a community, and she has supported me for the last 4 1/2 years." 
 
"No matter where you sit or who you represent, you are important to Governor Healey, and I know that firsthand because we talk often about the work that we do, the work we do in the weeds, the work we do at higher end, but Governor Healey gets it," she said, adding at a walkthrough of the Greylock School project later that she supports Healey and her running mate Kim Driscoll "150 percent."
 
Healey touted her role in being the "first governor in 20 years" to cut taxes, pointing to increases in tax credits for seniors and families, and signing the $5 billion housing act that allows accesory dwelling units by right and offered incentives for converting office space.
 
View Full Story

More North Adams Stories

Community News
image description

New Healey Makes Berkshire Campaign Swing: 'I Stand With You'

Community News
Schools
image description

Officials, Teachers & Children Add Names to Greylock School...

Schools
A & E
image description

Weekend Outlook: Summer Jazz

A & E
Community News
image description

Walnut Street Repair Project Expected to Begin This Fall

Community News
Community News
image description

North Adams Becomes a Purple Heart Community

Community News
Community News
image description

Veteran Spotlight: Army Lt. Col. Joseph Martellaro

Community News
Latest Stories
Previous Next

What's Trending?