Nausea
by Jean-Paul Sartre (1938)
2022 reads, 13/20:
“Three o'clock. Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do. An odd moment in the afternoon. Today it is intolerable.”
This one has been sitting on my bookshelf since I bought it last year. As a seminal piece of existentialist literature, I’ve been cautious of the warnings before going into this book, as it is supposed to make you question not just your own existence, but the existence of everyone and everything around you.
"...my God how strongly things exist today…”
Nausea is Sartre’s character-study-slash-philosophical-text written in the form of diary entries from Antoine Roquentin, a French historian who takes up residence in the fictional city Bouville after travelling abroad for many years. He starts this diary to try and understand this feeling of ‘nausea’ that overwhelms him, in order to figure out why he feels like he does. In doing this, Roquentin painfully details every single thought he has: the physicality of objects, the illusion of time, and his own existence.
There aren’t many characters in this book, but the ones that Roquentin does interact with (a local waitress, an autodidact aptly named the Self-Taught Man, and his ex-girlfriend, Anny) allow for Sartre to present his arguments for existentialism as dialogues. These were interesting to read, but I found that the most interesting sections of the book were the passages where Roquentin is on his own, such as the museum visit or chestnut tree. These scenes were well-written and beautifully described the thoughts of someone going through an existential crisis.
Nausea is a heavy book, in both text and emotion, but it lays out the early ideas of Sartre’s philosophy very well. It was also great to compare Sartre’s existentialism with Camus’ absurdism, and see those differences expressed via Roquentin. I won’t deny that the novel can get bit dry at times, but I think it’s accessible enough for anyone wanting to get into Sartre's works or existentialist philosophy.
“I wanted the moments of my life to follow and order themselves like those of a life remembered. You might as well try and catch time by the tail.”