Nausea - Jean-Paul Sartre

It took me quite a lot of effort to push through, but, by the end, I enjoyed this weird little surrealist book. I don't think I'll read it again, though.

I found this book several months ago in a Tiny Free Library somewhere in Los Altos. I picked it up just because it sounded kind of famous, like something a 29-year-old man should read.

Nausea is written as the found pages of the diary of Antoine Roquentin, a troubled man living in Bouville, France, in 1932. Surreally enough, I just happened to start reading the book on 29 January, the same day that the diary begins (modulo an undated opening page that introduces the Nausea, a horrible depression plaguing Roquentin).

It is hard to write much about this book. The plot is thin, or somehow unimportant, just a medium for things to happen to Roquentin. It is the character's feel, his experience of the sheens and flavors and colors of life, that are the essence of this work. The entire book is a way to experience the swells of depressive fugue states interspersed with fits of elation and near-clairvoyant insight. It is the story of a man finding that he can, eventually, find himself -- but, just now, the world is awfully grey and bleak. Or, worse, it is deeply empty and disgusting for its nauseous emptiness.

There is a scene in the middle that I particularly enjoyed, wherein Roquentin visits an art museum. He gives life to each portrait, recalling their subjects' histories, imbuing the painted people with emotion and intent. Their capture in absolute stillness is juxtaposed against their emotive characterizations in Roquentin's psyche, which is inverse to his fixed malaise juxtaposed against his flowing day-to-day life. I felt that this scene perfectly encompassed the book's driving turmoil: a man caught in a horrid stillness no matter how he moves. As Roquentin says of one portrait,

"Then I realized what separated us: what I might think about him could not touch him; it was just psychology, the sort you find in novels. But his judgment pierced me like a sword and called in question my very right to exist."

Read this book to feel a pure sense of hopelessness -- or, maybe more accurately, meaninglessness. But also, read it to experience the elation of, through stumbling around and giving up on imagined duties, the inevitability of self-actualization. By moving into stillness and acceptance, we move beyond the Nausea.