Nausea

Here's some thoughts on a book I reviewed years ago!

“I grasp at each second, trying to suck it dry. Nothing happens which I do not seize, which I do not fix forever in myself, nothing, neither the fugitive tenderness of those lovely eyes, nor the noises of the street, nor the false dawn of early morning: and even so the minute passes and I do not hold it back, I like to see it pass.” (Pg. 38)

And so goes Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nobel Prize winning book (1964) Nausea. Many consider this book Jean-Paul Sartre’s most important novel, and a “landmark in existential fiction.” Sartre is considered one of the most prolific French Existentialist writers of the 20th century. He was skilled as a philosopher, novelist, play-write and critic, ably bridging the gap between the academy and the “lay” person.

The book is the story of Frenchman Antoine Roquentin, a French writer critiquing his existence and surrounding culture in diary form. As I read on, I felt that I had been downloaded on to a Woody Allen movie set. Roquentin lamented life with a cast of witty epiphany and morbid self-interest and disdain (Nausea) for life. The Nausea he felt every time he came into bearing with his own existence. A nausea he vehemently tries to preclude through a derivative manipulation of his circumstances.

Nausea takes us into the depths of our souls and concludes that nothing is there. It’s a vapid, one-dimensional hole struggling for meaning. A cold hearted existence locating meaning through our own dvice, and then watching them flow into the endless vat of meaninglessness. This is clearly felt in Roquentin’s sexual dalliances. They are jejune, detached experiences that are a result of mutual “needs” devoid of real purpose or depth. There is no sharing of self, because ultimately there is no self to share, only presence. Roquentin tries desperately to make sense of his world, and escape this nausea, but seems appalled at the useless ways in which the characters he observes hypocritically deal with their own lives. Whether human rationalism depicted through the autodidacte (A man trying to read all the books in the library), the religious affections of his culture, or the hope of human love, he concludes its emptiness and seeming disdain for their existence too. Even when he turns inward for strength, he finds a vacuum. As writer Hayden Carruth writes in the introduction, “Neither the experience of the outside world nor the contemplation of the inner world can give meaning to existence.” (Pg. xii)

I must say Nausea leaves you, well, nauseated. However Sartre does an artistic job of pulling you into his world and gives us a soulful description of his brand of existentialism, as felt in the following quote.

“I had always realized it; I hadn’t the right to exist. I had appeared by chance, I existed like a stone, a plant or a microbe, My life put out feelers towards small pleasures in every direction. Sometimes it sent out vague signals; at other times I felt nothing more than a harmless buzzing.” (Pg. 84)

We are at once reminded by these words that Sartre and atheistic existentialism clearly recognize the fate of the world apart from god. Nothingness, a cruel existence without purpose, a derived essence of meaning. This book rips the heart out of optimistic humanism, and because of this, and it’s soulful inventory on the human condition, it is worth the read. Beware though, you may find some of the words haunting your soul, and extricating you from some of your blind coping mechanisms, and casting you into a canyon of despair. This book speaks honestly and vividly of life as it is without god. It is reminiscent of philosophers and writers through the ages that have honestly surveyed their lives, and have come up empty, reminding us that there really is nothing new under the sun. Despite our great technological advances in the past 100 years, man still searches for meaning on his own terms, only to realize, like Sartre, there is nothing to be found. We have discovered all there is, and in the long haul have bored ourselves to death.

I can’t say the book was enjoyable, but I can say it was enlightening, and a reminder that like Ecclesiastes concludes, life under the sun, without God is “meaninglessness, meaninglessness, meaninglessness.”