The White Kauai Hibiscus
Published November 1, 2024
People often ask me, “What are you reading?” Right now, it’s Lorenza Foschini’s Proust’s Overcoat—a used copy I picked up on a whim. To my delight, it delivers everything one could want from a book: exquisite style, infectious passion, and a subject both intimate and profound.
I’m no Proust scholar, but years ago, on a Kauai vacation, I devoured In Search of Lost Time while my wife trekked through the island’s valleys in pursuit of the elusive white Kauai hibiscus. We weren’t collectors—we just wanted to smell it. By the time we found it in our second week, its perfume—a bold alchemy of plumeria, gardenia, and jasmine—filled the air. By then, I’d finished Sodom and Gomorrah and moved on to The Prisoner.
The trip ended, and so did my Proustian marathon. I admired what I’d read, but it hadn’t consumed me—until now.
Foschini’s book led me to a note young Marcel once wrote to his grandfather:
“My dear grandpapa, I must ask your indulgence for 13 francs… To quit my ‘nasty habit,’ Papa gave me 10 francs for a brothel. But in my nervous state, I broke a chamber pot (3 francs) and then—agitated, ashamed—couldn’t bring myself to do the deed. Another 10 francs an hour, waiting in vain… I dare not ask Papa again. Surely you see this is no common folly, but a singular misery: one cannot twice in a lifetime be too distraught to fuck.”
If you’ve read If Pain Could Make Music, you’ll understand why this struck me so deeply. Marcel, of course, is worlds apart from Lemeilleur—yet both were shackled by the torment of desire. As Proust wrote in Sodom and Gomorrah, he belonged to “a cursed race compelled to live by lies, perjury, and silence, bearing desires deemed criminal, disgraceful, too shameful to name.”
Until now, I’d never considered myself Proustian in any way. But our characters shared a lifelong affliction: the weight of shame.
How rare is that?
As rare, perhaps, as the scent of the white Kauai hibiscus.