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Nausea is the story of Antoine Roquentin, a French writer who is horrified at his own existence. In impressionistic, diary form he ruthlessly catalogs his every feeling and sensation. His thoughts culminate in a pervasive, overpowering feeling of nausea which "spreads at the bottom of the viscous puddle, at the bottom of our time -- the time of purple suspenders and broken chair seats; it is made of wide, soft instants, spreading at the edge, like an oil stain."Winner of the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature (though he declined to accept it), Jean-Paul Sartre -- philosopher, critic, novelist, and dramatist -- holds a position of singular eminence in the world of French letters. La Nausee, his first and best novel, is a landmark in Existential fiction and a key work of the twentieth century.… (more)
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Roquentin suffers from attacks of what he calls ‘Nausea’ – a crippling sense of the utter superfluity and randomness of himself and the world around him. It is out of laziness, Roquentin supposes, that the world looks the same day after day. His world is one without order or rules, where anything could happen at any time. Turning his attention to the people around him, he analyses the myriad of meaningless constructs that humans create to facilitate a comfortable illusion of order and continuity. Past, future, memory, progress, wisdom, adventure . . . as these constructs fall away from him, one by one, the knowledge of his own unmitigated existence drives him slowly insane.
Nausea, then, is not only an exploration of Sartre’s existentialist ideas. It is a cautionary tale for would-be philosophers. Perhaps it is better, Sartre acknowledges, to be ignorant and happy, like the young people the Autodidact sees admiring paintings without any idea of their meaning, and appearing to enjoy themselves regardless. They must have been pretending, responds Roquentin – an injection of Sartre’s own dry, self-mocking wit.
Indeed, the debilitating angst of Nausea begs an inevitable question of the reader: how is it that these can be Sartre’s thoughts, Sartre’s beliefs, when Sartre himself was neither mad nor depressed? The novel carries all the marks of Sartre’s life and work. Its ideas are those of his later philosophical treatise, Being and Nothingness. Its port-town setting is strongly reminiscent of Le Havre in Haute-Normandie, where Sartre wrote Nausea in 1938. Connections can be spotted, here and there, between the novel and Sartre’s life – like the Autodidact, for example, Sartre spent time as a prisoner of war in Germany. Long passages of the novel are devoted to mocking and criticising the constructions and trivialities of bourgeois life, in accordance with the beliefs that led Sartre to decline the Nobel Prize for Literature when it was offered to him in 1964. (These passages form the most uninteresting sections of the novel, as the insipidity of bourgeois life threatens to carry over to Sartre’s prolix discussions of it.)
Yet, for all his links with the tormented Roquentin, Sartre remained content with his life to the end. In his own words: The only thing that I truly like to do is to be at my desk and write, especially about philosophy. Philosophy for him was not a source of angst, but a source of enjoyment. How did Sartre alleviate the pain of his own existence?
The answers may perhaps be found in the final few pages of Nausea, when the novel justifies not only Roquentin’s existence, but also its own. As he listens to his favourite record for the last time, Roquentin is struck by the permanence of the melody, which does not, in itself, exist, but which nonetheless endures, even despite the scratches on the vinyl. Through their creation of music, Roquentin realises, the composer and singer have cleansed themselves of the sin of existing. Inspired, he resolves to do the same by writing a novel, which will be beautiful and hard as steel and make people ashamed of their existence: the same novel that the reader now holds.
After all, what is literature but a medium for conveying ideas? Long after Sartre’s death in 1980, the ideas he conveyed will live on, and this is his justification for existing. Perhaps, then, Roquentin is not so far removed from Sartre after all. It is philosophy that has awakened him to reality, philosophy that has brought his world crashing down around him, and philosophy that will ultimately save him.
Existence without essence is naked, cold, detestable (like a bolbous rock easily reduced to pure, bare existence). To demand meaning, to turn inward, and to see Nothing is to feel nausea. “Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance.” It is difficult to be a man, the knowing animal, who must tolerate the human condition, suffer with the idea of life’s absurdity. Dostoevsy wrote “Suffering is the sole root of consciousness”. More broadly, this novel is really an anthropocentric exploration into man’s struggle to accept himself and his epistemological limitations.
It is a very different novel to other existentialist works such as those of Camus and Kafka, though there is also much that the works have in common – not least the quality, and the sense of estrangement from the world.
Nausea is a much more accessible work than Sartre's Being and Nothingness, and brings in the existentialist philosophy as much by evocation of existentialist feeling than by overt philosophising.
The Nausea of the title refers less to the sense of diziness described by other existentialists as a response the overwhelming freedom we are faced with, but more as a psychological unbalance brought on not by intellectual causes but by feelings of social isolation, bodily dissociation, and alienation from the reality around – of the inauthenticity of objects, situations, and people. Thus we have nausea in this case as a symptom as it is felt by the schizophrenic for example.
Among all this, there are a few thoughts on politics and society, and sections of interest for their view on French culture and life from the time it was written.
I would recommend this to anyone interested in existentialist novels, not only for the differences in Sartre's take on existentialism compared to the other writers, but for this works high literary standard and other incidental points of interest. Nausea would also make a good introduction to this genre of novel, and a more accessible work than his non-fiction works, for those interested in reading Sartre.
Fast forward 25 years, and the book looks like a bitter, indulgent, embarrassing excercise in self-pity.
(kids: for best effect, play Pink Floyd's "The Wall" while reading!)
In his essay "What Is literature?", Sartre wrote, "On the one hand, the literary object has no substance but the reader's subjectivity . . . But, on the other hand, the words are there like traps to arouse our feelings and to reflect them towards us . . . Thus, the writer appeals to the reader's freedom to collaborate in the production of the work." His appeal did not work well for me in this novel. Perhaps another time it will.
Given what I thought I knew about it, I expected this book to be far more difficult to read than
I have a lot of thoughts about where I did and didn't identify with the narrator, Antoine. More than I will probably go into here, but I do wonder how much of Antoine's nausea was caused by his self-sufficiency. Antoine's income or savings was enough to allow him to travel all over the world doing research for a book he was writing. He could stay in boarding houses, eat out for all his meals, while away his hours in his rooms, at the library, walking around town. He seems to have no obligations to any other person, with no mentions of family, and his only relationships with the Self-Taught Man, whom he looks down on, and Anny, who seems similarly rootless and disaffected, and with whom he was a very stilted relationship. (And no, I'm not counting the barmaid he regularly shtups as an actual relationship.) I cannot help but wonder what such an existential crisis would look like on a woman, or someone with bills to pay.
Looking back, as much as I found many passages very affecting and familiar, I also end up feeling a little impatient with the whole thing in the end.
written in journal format, Antoine Roquentin supposedly hates his life, or is it just existence,
if you follow his logic, his pulse, it will suck you in and absorb you...
i cannot give this book the justice it deserves, you should find out for yourself... but make sure to read in a quiet, dark and lonely place.
It's an exploration of the search for meaning in a life without God. Freedom, essentially, is the issue at stake. Sartre unhurriedly walks the reader through this journey of self-awareness, infusing the book with a subtle
While I did not necessarily agree with all that the novel seemed to say, there was no part of it that failed to interest me. It's unsurprising that 'Nausea' is considered among the most influential existentialist texts to have been written. It's well worth the read, as it forces the attentive reader to consider what it truly means to be alive.
If you're unfailingly comfortable in your skin, this probably won't do much for you.
First published in 1938 Nausea is Jean-Paul Sartre’s first novel and is an
The novel is written as Roquentin’s diary and it soon becomes apparent that Roquentin leads an empty existence, spending his days in the local library doing research for a book that he will never write, and his evenings in cafes and restaurants with other equally lonely individuals. Roquentin has an allowance which means that he doesn't need to work but according to Sartre’s form of existentialism this freedom is a heavy burden. Roquentin is aware of his freedom but unsure what to do with it and is overwhelmed by the possibilities. Roquentin starts the diary so as to be able to understand and document the 'nausea' (listlessness) that he feels in his life. This process of self-reflection seems initially self-defeating even overwhelming but eventually provides him with the knowledge that he seeks until ultimately, the diary proves a record of his rebirth as a novelist. Sartre paints the picture of a rather sad world in which loneliness pervades, not only Roquentin’s but also those around him. Roquentin learns that he cannot rely on anyone else for his happiness.
The novel can be read in a whole number of ways. No doubt some will see it as the idle rich having too much time on their hands to do anything other than lounge about feeling sorry for themselves, however, most readers will simply see this as an introduction to Sartre's philosophy on existentialism. Roquentin tries to refute the existence of anything but the present but when he meets an old flame, Anny, in Paris, he realises that any apparent disconnect between past and present is only ever illusory. Which is a message to us all.
Personally I found this a rather hard and not an overly enjoyable read, mainly because I simply had to really concentrate to get anything at all out of it. I never felt able to just zone out for a wee while. That is not to say it does not have its merits. In particular it was interesting to be reminded that every individual has the freedom and the ability to choose different paths at different moments in their lives. This on the face of it seems blindingly obvious but it is in fact probably the most important freedom that we will ever have. Overall I am glad that I've read it but am doubtful that I would ever actively seek out any of his other writings.
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