Äcklet

by Jean-Paul Sartre

Other authorsEva Alexanderson
Paper Book, 1949

Status

Available

Call number

843.914

Tags

Collection

Publication

Stockholm : Bonnier, 1949

Description

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)

Media reviews

Sartre's name, I understand, is associated with a fashionable brand of cafe philosophy and since for every so-called "existentialist" one finds quite a few "suctorialists" (if I may coin a polite term), this made-in- England translation of Sartre's first novel, "La Nausée" (published in Paris in
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1938) should enjoy some success. It is hard to imagine except in a farce) a dentist persistently pulling out the wrong tooth. Publishers and translators, however, seem to get away with something of that sort. Lack of space limits me to only these examples of Mr. Alexander's blunders.
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User reviews

LibraryThing member SamuelW
How do you reconcile your own existence in a world without meaning or purpose? With the decline of religion in a modern world, it is a question that many non-believers will find themselves asking – and some may find answers in Nausea, an undisputed classic of modern philosophical fiction.

From
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atheism springs existentialism – the philosophical movement led by 20th-century French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre – and from existentialism springs Nausea, Sartre’s first major exploration of the ideas he became famous for. It takes the form of a diary; fittingly, a journal of philosophical ideas and their effects on the philosopher who realises them. As Sartre’s prose unfolds – at times measured and sure, at times frantic and epiphanic – we begin to build a picture of the novel’s protagonist, Antoine Roquentin, a historian living alone in the town of Bouville. He dines at the Café Mably, researches the Marquis de Rollebon at the library with his friend the Autodidact, observes his fellow citizens and reminisces about his past. The details of Roquentin’s life, however, are deliberately unimportant; as Sartre’s creation, he serves to explore ideas which are much more universal.

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.
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LibraryThing member DarkWater
Some argue that existentialism is more of a feeling than a philosophy, and one could easily get that impression after reading Sartre’s novels. Sartre was not afraid to explore his philosophical ideals in different forms, and his Renaissance-man abilities in writing allowed him this freedom, even
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as a novelist. Nausea, in particular, is a collection of diary entries from one Monsieur Roquentin whose soliloquies personalize existentialism.

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.
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LibraryThing member P_S_Patrick
Nausea is Sartre's first novel, and is presented in the form of a sporadically-kept diary of a Frenchman called Antoine living in a provincial sea-side town. Antoine is independent financially, and is studying the life of a particular obscure historical figure to keep himself occupied. Between
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doing this, he visits cafes and the library, spends time in his room, and wanders around the town.
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.
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LibraryThing member BirdBrian
Awww, cheer up, Sartre! Things can't be that bad, can they? This book is FANTASTIC if you are an angst-ridden teenager, sitting at home on a Friday night, stewing about all the people who don't "get" you, wondering why she goes out with those dumb jocks (can't she see what a sensitive guy you
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are?), contemplating what your bedroom would look like if only your parents would let you paint it black (with a black rug)...
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!)
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LibraryThing member jwhenderson
This is Sartre's first novel and one of his best-known. I read it as part of an introductory class on Existentialism at the University of Chicago's Basic Program of Liberal Studies. Sartre's novel depicts the life of a dejected historian in a town similar to Le Havre, who becomes convinced that
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inanimate objects and situations encroach on his ability to define himself, on his intellectual and spiritual freedom, evoking in the protagonist a sense of nausea. Colin Wilson commented on this novel that "Roquentin feels insignificant before things. Without the meaning his Will would normally impose on it, his existence is absurd. Causality — Hume’s bugbear — has collapsed; consequently there are no adventures." While it is widely considered one of the canonical works of existentialism I did not find it as helpful as The Plague by Camus or The Trial by Kafka for my development of a better understanding of existentialism. I was not impressed with Sartre's approach to Roquentin, the main character, who seemed to lack direction, unable to process or even recognize reality. I found it difficult to appreciate Sartre's handling of this and other issues. Even the humor present in the actions of Ogier P., the autodidact, fell flat.

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.
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LibraryThing member figre
There are interesting portions of this book; interesting enough to make it worth reading. As the first novel by Sartre, it is understandable that it be a treatise for his existentialist approaches. I have not studied philosophy, so I cannot quote you the meanings of existentialism (shy of the comic
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book snippets one receives in classes, books, and conversations among people who really don’t know what they are talking about). But everything I know (so little) and everything I’ve read indicates this is a pivotal piece. And, as I mentioned, there are very interesting concepts in here. Some I rejected out of hand; others I found resonated. And, while it was heavy slogging through a couple of parts (to be expected in a French book trying to expound a philosophy); overall it was not a difficult read. In all, this is probably not the best way to introduce yourself to Sartre or existentialism. However, if it is your first foray (as it was mine), you will find, if not an in-depth introduction, a nice peek into what it may mean.
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LibraryThing member skiegazer3
Perhaps a little slow in the beginning, but rich in experiential and philosophical detail. It's satisfying to read a book that addresses primarily internal rather than external action and change, in which the narrator explores a dense inner life and struggles with themes of meaninglessness,
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purpose, memory and existence itself. The philosophy of existentialism presented here may not appeal to everyone; however, I think the fictive events presented are an important and insightful record of the kind of melancholy many thinking people experience during some part of their lives. Whether or not they come to affirm, like Sartre's narrator does, the effort of creative self-becoming through work and art, the book offers insight into some key philosophical concepts while retaining the emotional and mental atmosphere in which such ideas might occur.
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LibraryThing member greeniezona
I'd just read about this book in another book, but I can't for the life of me remember where. So it was an easy sell when I bumped into it at Eighth Day Books, particularly as I really liked the cover.

Given what I thought I knew about it, I expected this book to be far more difficult to read than
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it was. Granted, there were certainly a few passages where I struggled to stay engaged -- particularly the whole bit with the portraits of the town fathers, which went on far too long -- but other bits were so startlingly familiar and/or relatable.

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.
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LibraryThing member jennyolsson
Horrible book, I didn't like it at all but was forced to read it in school.
LibraryThing member cemagoc
Truly wonderful book. I had such a lovely experience reading it in my existential fiction class (college). Sartre was a master and this book is his masterpiece, in my opinion. The Mandarins by Beauvoir was a nice companion to it, and I probably consider myself an existentialist because of these
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two. I highly recommend this to any of the philosophers among you.
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LibraryThing member atomheart
for anyone who questions things, feelings, emotions that you have, yet don't understand why nor feel as if you should have them, but yet can't help but wonder why... why why why, this book is for you.

written in journal format, Antoine Roquentin supposedly hates his life, or is it just existence,
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the questioning of present, of the next moment to come... his extreme discomfort for existence creates thought-provoking and intellectually stimulating moments as a reader -- i found myself making notes, underlining passages...

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.
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LibraryThing member Inky500
Depressing and boring...but you feel this guy's pain. EXISTENTIALIST ANGST- or as we say in French "pas de vin".
LibraryThing member lautremont5
nausea was a suitable title for this book . a better summary title wolld have been angst 101.
LibraryThing member AmaliC
'Nausea' is the sort of book that can change the way you see the world.

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
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humour and using the absurdity of his fiction to reflect the absurdity of reality itself.

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.
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LibraryThing member autumnesf
Did not enjoy. A mans diary about life - in which he sounds like a disconnected idiot.
LibraryThing member phrontist
As a lot of reviewers point out, the seams between the narrative and didactic bits are a bit rough at times. Other than that, I think it hits the mark it aims for.

If you're unfailingly comfortable in your skin, this probably won't do much for you.
LibraryThing member raschneid
Nausea is brilliant, but I have a hard time being viscerally repulsed by trees. Sorry M. Roquentin.
LibraryThing member keylawk
Young man looking for himself in himself, which turns out to be the wrong place at the wrong time. One of what, seven, autobiographies by this philosopher of Idiocy, the new Joy. Clueless. The one thing he had going for himself was Simone de Beauvoir. Maybe the one path he chose that was not the
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easy one. The Vichy episode is not well-known. Sartre's contribution (another footnote) to the Platonic riff on Meaninglessness, is the concept (it remained conceptual in Satre's finger-fingered hands) of "Acting". (No, Kierkegaard, not a Leap of Faith, just the Leap and Nothingness.) Now how hard is this for a young man to "figure out" in the vaccuum of His Own. (No, Heidegger, not reduced to Being and Nothingness.)
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LibraryThing member PilgrimJess
"It's quite an undertaking to start loving somebody. You have to have energy, generosity, blindness. There is even a moment right at the start where you have to jump across an abyss: if you think about it you don't do it."

First published in 1938 Nausea is Jean-Paul Sartre’s first novel and is an
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exploration of his early thoughts on existentialism through the existence of one man Antoine Roquentin. Roquentin is shortly to turn thirty and is writing a biography of the Marquis de Rollebon in the fictional French town of Bouville.

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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LibraryThing member billmcn
Read it in college for an Existentialism class, like you do...As a moody character study Nausea is actually quite good, but I just can't relate to the emotional tenor of Existentialism. The intellectual positions I've been able to glean—the absence of any inherent moral structure to the universe,
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and a correspondingly acute awareness of one's own agency—seem like fair descriptions of the way the world actually is, but these fill me with a sense of freedom, not despair. The famous bit near the end of the book where Roquentin is sitting in a park and has this sudden profound sense of the reality of a tree trunk in front of him—to an atheist, scientist like myself that sounds like it would be a joyful experience, an unvarnished glimpse of the big crazy universe we live in, but it just bums Roquentin out. We're just not on the same page emotionally, I guess.
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LibraryThing member soylentgreen23
One that I struggled to get through, but which remained with me for a long time afterwards. Plus I read it in France, which is something!
LibraryThing member trilliams
It bothers me how much I identified with Roquentin. Also, "I suppose it is out of laziness that the world is the same day after day."
LibraryThing member JennysBookBag.com
I liked some of it, but then I lost interest.
LibraryThing member DinadansFriend
I read this book to practice my French....Sadly i have not felt the need to reread, nor do I retain any details to inspire a re-engagement. A writer, tries to relentlessly examine his life, hoping to find some kind of redeeming moment or quality in it....He's not optimistic about his results. He
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could actually try to do something interesting...
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LibraryThing member billycongo
I can't remember this. I must read it again.

Language

Original language

French

Original publication date

1938 (original French)
1959 (English: Alexander)

Other editions

Äcklet by Jean-Paul Sartre (Paper Book)
Äcklet by Jean-Paul Sartre (Paper Book)
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