Content-Type: MESSAGE/RFC822; CHARSET=US-ASCII Content-ID: Content-Description: Date: Mon, 17 May 1999 14:03:43 +1200 From: "Brian Boyd" To: chtodel@humanitas.ucsb.edu Subject: stacy schiff's vera Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline For those of you whose e-mail cannot handle attachments, here is an = partially formatted version of Brian Boyd's May 15 Globe and Mail = (Toronto) review of Stacy Schiff's Vera. http://globeandmail.com/ Handmaid to genius Vladimir Nabokov's wife V=E9ra, the great novelist's life-long enabler, finally comes into her own. Stacy Schiff's biography, though full of fresh vignettes, is short on understanding. V=C9RA: (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov) Saturday, May 15, 1999 BRIAN BOYD By Stacy Schiff=20 Random, 456 pages=20 Stacy Schiff's V=E9ra is not so much a biography of = V=E9ra Nabokov as a supplementary life of Vladimir Nabokov which focuses = whenever it can -- and V=E9ra herself, with her sense of privacy, ensured = that that was as rarely as possible -- on Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov. Eight ninths of the book covers V=E9ra's years with = Nabokov, while the remaining fraction skims through her 35 years before = and after VN, the vital years of her youth and her role in age as guardian = of her husband's legacy. Yet if Schiff found it difficult to show V=E9ra's life = except when intertwined with VN's, there were opportunities. Since = literature was at the centre of V=E9ra's life, why does Schiff not mention = that V=E9ra wrote poetry from the age of 10 or 11 until after the Russian = revolution? Why is there nothing of her last snatches of schooling, in = Moscow and Odessa, no reference to her youthful socialism (quickly = dispelled by the Bolshevik coup), nothing of the visit to her school of = the lame commissar for education whom Nabokov recreates so vividly in The = Defense from V=E9ra's memories? In terms of V=E9ra's years as keeper of the flame, = should there not be some assessment of her most important literary effort, = her translation of Pale Fire into Russian -- and why should we be told = that she contemplated translating Ada into Italian when it was Russian she = had in mind? V=E9ra's first chapter begins, "V=E9ra Nabokov neither wrote = her memoirs nor considered doing so." But after Nabokov's death V=E9ra did = consider writing a memoir of her husband, only to decide she had neither = the Russian nor the English she would need. But we should be grateful for what is in the book. = V=E9ra's strength lies in the vast range of interviews conducted by = Schiff, an American writer who divides her time between New York and = Edmonton, and who won awards for her 1995 biography Saint-Exup=E9ry. To = find information about V=E9ra Nabokov at all, Schiff had to cast her net = wide. Unfortunately, she often uses her catch rather indiscriminately, = perhaps naively, perhaps unconsciously preferring an implausible, almost = certainly erroneous, patch of colour to the plain outline of the truth. = Her method preserves valuable fresh vignettes of V and = V, but offers far less understanding of writer or wife, or the relationship= between them. Unlike V=E9ra, Schiff has a dim view, in both senses, = of Nabokov's character and oeuvre. Writing about Nikolay Gogol, Nabokov's = study of the man he calls the "greatest artist" and "the strangest = prose-poet" Russia has yet produced, she confines herself to her chief = convictions about Nabokov's work, that it is self-obsessed (in this case, = that it tells us more about Nabokov than Gogol) and full of pet peeves. It = is hard to recognize in Schiff's report what Elizabeth Hardwick calls "one = of the best books ever written by one author about another," or the book = that has done more than any other to boost Gogol's reputation in the = English-speaking world. Her comments on Nabokov's work as a lepidopterist = show that, unlike V=E9ra, she has not made the slightest effort to = understand it. She sees Nabokov's character as boastful and self-obsess= ed, and his wife as strident in her claims for his stature, but she does = not try to analyze their situation or compare it with others. Martin Amis = has recently contrasted Joyce and Nabokov, and, despite his admiration for = Ulysses, has named Nabokov his novelist of the century. If Amis is right, = or even anywhere near right -- and critical opinion seems to be tipping = his way -- then for instance the Nabokovs' unease in their years at = Cornell University, on which Schiff dwells, seems natural. Joyce sponged = on others, while living extravagantly and basking in his fame; Nabokov = held down a full-time academic job to support his wife and son and a = sister he did not care for, while living very modestly. He had to put up = with the fact that no one around him knew he had written what many think = is the Russian novel of the century, The Gift, and had to snatch time to = write what some would come to judge the English-language novel of the = century, Lolita.=20 No wonder he felt irritated by his academic commitments, no wonder = V=E9ra could not help (however unwisely) voicing her sense of her = husband's standing. Schiff never really explains the paradox of V=E9ra's = fierce pride and fierce self-effacement. Before she first put herself in = Nabokov's way, V=E9ra was convinced of his literary genius, and utterly = sure both of her own powers as a reader and of the paltriness of her = powers as a writer compared with his gifts. Where Joyce liked the fact = that his wife, Nora, had no understanding of his work, Nabokov enjoyed = writing for V=E9ra as his first and best reader, and for all her natural = complaints about the workload his fame brought, she was proud to do all = she could to leave him all the time possible to create. Schiff knows this, even if she does not explain it well = (she might have quoted V=E9ra: "Let me explain that I am writing my = husband's letters because he writes other things in the meanwhile"), but = she seems to feel a need to impugn Nabokov for the efforts V=E9ra made on = his behalf. Schiff asks: "Did she enjoy driving, or was she again the = victim of her own competence?" Even in her eighties, V=E9ra's eyes lit up = when she recalled the trips out West: " 'I loved driving the car,' she = recollected, a smile spreading across her face." Why then suggest that = "again" she may have been a victim? Schiff naturally begins by asserting V=E9ra's contributi= on to her husband's life and work. No one would disagree: She was wife and = mother, manager and chauffeur, assistant, secretary and agent, working = almost but never quite as hard as Nabokov to allow him to produce as much = as he did. But that does not suffice for Schiff, who sounds closer to = advertising than analysis when she claims that features central to = Nabokov's work -- his love for detail, his interest in the beyond -- enter = his life when V=E9ra does. She can maintain this only because she does not know = Nabokov's untranslated early works (scores of his poems, a play, the essay = on Rupert Brooke), which show these features well developed before Nabokov = met V=E9ra. Indeed, it seems a fatal flaw that Schiff cannot read Russian, = the main language of a woman whose life was literature. But even apart = from her mistakes here and elsewhere in Russian and in Russian history, = how can Schiff possibly maintain that someone who tried to publish his = first butterfly article at 10 needed V=E9ra to awaken him to detail? Alas, I suspect, only because she is more interested in = making a bold claim for V=E9ra than in the truth. She declares that = Nabokov rated the Russian Lolita and the revised Speak, Memory as "the two = projects that meant the most to him in the later years. V=E9ra collaborated= on the first and contributed to the second." But when we turn to the = source Schiff refers to, what Nabokov actually wrote in his diary was that = he had just shipped the Russian Lolita to his publisher and was recorrectin= g Speak, Memory: "These are two things I have been longing to do for the = past 10 years." In other words, he had spent the previous 10 years on = several major projects * the Eugene Onegin translation, Pale Fire, an = aborted Butterflies of Europe, the first attempts at Ada -- and now has at = last found the time for two attractive minor tasks, and that is all. Schiff writes with what may pass for verve but often = lapses into fatuity ("Ithaca, and Cornell, are to a great extent America") = or murk ("These, though, were friendships as bibliography. A few relationsh= ips reached beyond art"). She fails to think of what the reader needs to = know, spoiling a marvellous anecdote, for instance, by writing that = Nabokov "administered an ambulatory Latin exam" when she means that he = asked a stranger tagging along with him if he could identify the butterflie= s that passed them by. For some reason she often avoids naming people, and = even some of the Nabokov works to which she is referring. Stacy Schiff asked at an early stage whether I thought = there was a biography to be written of V=E9ra Nabokov. Although I did not = want to seem to be protecting my territory, I had to answer no. She has = proved me wrong; but this is not the biography V=E9ra deserves.=20 Brian Boyd saw V=E9ra Nabokov every day for a year and = a half while writing the standard biography of Nabokov, Vladimir Nabokov: = The Russian Years (1990) and Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years (1991). = He has written books on Nabokov's Pale Fire and Ada and edited Nabokov's = English fiction, memoirs and butterfly writings. He is professor of = English at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Related Reading Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited, by Vladimir = Nabokov, Everyman's Library, 320 pages. Nabokov's memoir of his Russian = youth is one of the great autobiographies of the century -- no, make that = one of the great books. This lovely reissue contains the previously = unpublished 16th chapter, a pseudo-review comparing the present book to = the non-existent memoir When Lilacs Last (a reference to Walt Whitman's = poem on Lincoln's death). Brian Boyd's incisive introduction = further complements an overwhelming work of radiant prose and passionate= remembrance.