Nausea Reviews

• Nausea

  
  By A2M7RPFEMKRT8M on 2004-10-03
  With his first novel, Sartre began to explore what would later come to be known as existentialism, or the philosophy that: 'Holds that there is no intrinsic meaning or purpose, therefore it is up to each individual to determine his own meaning and purpose and take responsibility for his actions'. While this line of philosophical thought does have its origins in Kierkegaard, it was in the writings of Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus and Sartre that these ideas were fully developed.
  
  Antoine Roquentin is a solitary man, recently afflicted with a recurrent feeling, one that he terms 'the Nausea'. At times, he feels that life is repugnant, a vapid, shallow game between mindless people who have no real idea of their own purpose or consequence, himself included. At first he dismisses these feelings as the typical lonely thoughts of an ageing academic who is unable to complete the book he has been researching for years, but as the feeling continues and he is able to examine himself with greater and greater clarity, Roquentin begins to learn that maybe he has stumbled upon one of the great truths of our reality.
  
  He discovers that there is no essence, no importance in motion or in the petty labels that people like to attach to themselves and others in a bid to catalogue the world and everything in it, and by cataloguing, to control. He reasons that we are essentially impossible to control, that each person exists because they exist, and for no other reason that that. The terms of our existence are unspecific, but clear. We do not exist to be pawns to a god, or to move the path of humanity forward. Instead, we exist simply to exist, we are an end unto ourselves, and the inherent absurdity in our lives means that a meaningful existence is impossible and even blasphemous. Through clear-eyed, coherent thinking, we are able to control our lives as we choose, and it is up to every man and woman to independently reject suicide. For those that do not, the meaningless quality of our lives makes no different when compared to those that do, thus there is no dishonour or achievement in either.
  
  During the novel, there are a few side stories involving an ex-lover and a child-molesting friend, but these characters are used mostly as foils for Sartre's philosophy. In presenting arguments to Roquentin, Sartre is able to adequately satisfy the objections to his philosophy. There is a sense, however, that while the elements of existentialism presented in Nausea are powerful and compelling, the picture is not yet complete and no real answers are given. Later on in his career, Sartre was able to provide a large number of these answers, but even this early on, with his first novel, the depth of his thinking and the power of his message is quite simply amazing. Nausea is a stunning book, an intellectual delight, and is recommended to all.
  
  

• Stunning

  
  By A10FCGM5H4HHF7 on 2000-02-18
  Nausea is one of the most powerful literary experiences one can find. The form of the novel enables us to enter into Sartre's brilliant (and warped)mind. There is a sort of inexplicable energy that keeps on pushing you to read further and further- it is impossible to put this book down. The work can be appreciated as a novel for the quality of the story, but can also be understood as a powerful argument for Sartre's existentialist philosophy. He takes the reader through different alternatives to realizing that one's knowledge of one's existence makes one sick or creates nausea. Common escapes such as glorifying the past, the hope of relentless self-improvement,placing faith in love, are all explored and dramatically proven by Sartre to be false delusions to the truth that human existence is sickening.
  
  

• Extremely important and a must read, but whiny and weak

  
  By A2HW33PQSRHLNO on 2001-10-26
  It's surprising that a philosopher as well read as Sartre, heavily influenced by the likes of Nietzsche or Breton, should assent to such an ineffectual, non creative view of human existence as the one given in this book. It's likely that even the most joyous and optimistic person knows the feeling that Sartre is trying to convey--the awkwardness and occasional revulsion of concrete, everyday perception as contrasted with our inner life or imagination. There seems to be a curious division between actual reality and the abstractions or ideals we form of it, an unpleasant divide between the material and the mental. Of course, we should give all due respect to Sartre for having the rare ability to articulate this very vague feeling that a less talented artist or thinker would undoubtedly fail to depict as vividly as he does, but at the same time anyone deeply interested in philosophy (particularly the existentialist movement) can't help but feel disappointment at a book that seems at times like a pointless exercise in useless morbidity and weakness. I'm puzzled that some call this book 'visionary', when in fact the truth is that it's the opposite of visionary or imaginative, that is, deliberately impoverished and bleak. I personally have no doubt that Nietzsche or Sartre's others predecessors would feel nothing but contempt and hatred for this novel. You come away wondering why Sartre wrote it at all, since it is so negative and despairing that if the author actually felt the way Roquentin did, the only thing left for him to do would be to kill himself. At least Camus, who I find tame, boring and depressing, had the strength to affirm life even while acknowledging it's possible meaninglessness and ultimate futility. It is true that there is a curious and unsettling divorce of the human mind from the material reality it inhabits, but I hardly think it follows from this that life is wholly in vain or 'nauseating'. Admitting the very existence of this feeling does indeed take a great deal of philosophical courage and intellectual integrity (given it's possible consequences), but drawing the conclusions from it that Sartre supposedly did is simply mistaken. Read it just for the experience, but try to recognize how subjective and relative Sartre's conclusions are.
  
  

• Incredible piece of writing

  
  By on 2001-04-29
  When I bought this book I could not put it down. The emotions and thoughts that Antoine has very much mirrored the way I felt about life and existence. As a few of the reviewers have pointed out, the whole story is depressing and grim. This is the whole point of the story!!! Life and existence, as the books name suggests, is nauseating and disgusting.

  The writing style of Jean Paul Sartre is nothing less than breath taking. The anger, the depression, and the fear of existing is captured beautifully in Sartre's writing. Highly recommended if you want to learn and get a feel of the main ideas of existentialism.

  By the way, as to the question of "If existence is meaningless, why not just kill yourself?" Well, why do people climb mountains if they are just going to come back down? Some people create their own personal purpose and give meaning to their lives through some medium. So, why not kill myself? I suppose it's the same reason Bertrand Russel didn't kill himself: I wish to learn more Mathematics.

  Anyways, Albert Camus answers this very question with lucid prose in his book "The Myth of Sisyphus."
  
  

• Existence over Essence

  
  By A2G8R4HU3ZWZ9R on 2002-07-09
  'Nausea' - Sartre used a negative sounding title for a philosophy which, albeit incomplete, is still positive.

  The book is about a lonely historian, Roquentin, who moves into this small town of Bouville to further his biographical research on a French Nobleman - Monsieur Rollebon. Roquentin has a certain uneasy feeling about everything going on about him - but he is not able to pin it down.

  "Something fundamental has changed. I know it. Is it me who has changed or is it from the outside, I do not know. But I must decide". This is the chilling statement in the first page of the diary of Roquentin. Here, Sartre is using the gist of existentialism and Husserl's phenomenology to analyze the most basic issue of all - What the hell is existence?

  Existentialism - Simply put, it means existence over essence. Its better to live as it is rather than condition oneself to existence(Wherin the essences are intravenously fed into our consciousness).

  'You have to be good and kind if you need salvation';

  'Spare the rod and spoil the child'.

  These are rather simplistic aspects of conditioning that I am citing but if one were to actually map his/ her life from the beginning, he realises that right from day-1, the world as represented by parents,family & society has been preparing him in an effort to make him 'ready' to survive in the world and 'live'. This conditioned sense of 'Living' is what Roquentin loses all of a sudden. Those things which once mattered a lot to him like his own work on Rollebon, his love for Annie, even the very sense of day-to-day living fall away. And what is left is this rather naked sense of 'Nausea'.

  Thus Roquentin's feeling of uneasiness or nausea is the predicament of a man who suddenly has abrogated himself from(both voluntarily and involuntarily) all previous notions of conditioned existence.

  But whats the answer and solution to this nausea?

  Roquentin has flashes of naked existence or what Eckhart called as 'Isness' when he listens to a black Jazz singer. The sheer sense of music without the baggage of 'Interpreted music' acts like a breath of fresh air in Roquentin's otherwise stale life.

  But I think, Sartre did not complete the answer to the riddle of 'How does one live authentically?'. But this is not to be seen as a limitation of the book. The writer is remaining true to his thoughts, I feel, and Sartre himself was possibly looking for answers.

  Read this book if you want old, wrong answers about life in your mind to be decimated. You might not get readymade solutions but possibly, the right questions would pervade your intellect and lead you on to other streams of philosophy which deliver the answers to these questions.
  
  

• Endlessly rewarding read
  By A2SBYLTY1DRX7L on 2002-09-15
  Nausea is the difinitive work of Jean-Paul Sartre and reflects the nature of the existential movement. Often oversimplified as boring, depressing or pointless; Nausea is in fact a phycological journey for the courageous thinker. It poses and answers many important existential questions through the interactions and ruminations of the main charecter, Antoine. The book is so well written and translated that the discriptions actually transform your philisophical state - you feel the Nausea. This little book is also packed with information, and calls for so much self-exploration, that it is sometimes described as hard to read. If taken slowly and internalized, this is an endlessly rewarding read.
  
  
• Everyone has to give their lives a meaning
  By A22DUZU3XVA8HA on 2001-02-15
  And Roquentin, the main character, is unable to do so. This novel is in the form of a diary, which tells the thoughts, emotions and everyday experiences of the lonely Roquentin in the town of Bouville, and in his visit to Paris to see ex-girlfriend Anny, when he tries to recover his past. It is a novel about existence and the conscience about existence. Roquentin can not find any meaning to life: the hollowness, emptiness, meaninglessness of life nauseate him. Every other moment, for example when he's contemplating a tree, Roquentin suddenly feels the utter futility of life and this gives him a big nausea: the nausea, the horror of existing in the abstract. It is about existence as a pure, absolut experience.

  Although the subject of this novel is eternal, deep and real, I was unsatisfied with the book as a literary work. At some point, you just want to tell Roquentin: "You see, doing nothing all day, other than exploring yourself and thinking about how hollow life is, will not give much meaning to your life. So stop gazing at your navel and do something. Maybe then you'll feel life is not necessarily that horrible".
  
  

• Expect to be challenged
  By on 2002-09-06
  Nausea is not an easy book to read, not because of length or complexity of writing but because it forces the reader to confront some of the most frightening questions about life. The plot is largely uneventful, and yet this is where the majority of the book's philosophical questions arise. It's amidst the mundane, the every-day, the common interactions in life wherein the main character Roquentin questions the foundations of reality: what is this world I live in? why am I here? what does my life mean?

  The thing Roquentin encounters most dramatically is existence: dull, ever-present, unable to be explained, a hidden and dumb force that waits silently behind the meanings we ascribe to it. And it is this force, the force of existence, which is the ultimate source of humility, for in it all of our actions are rendered meaningless.

  Why do we do what we do? What are our motivations, our ambitions, and why do we have them? Sartre explores questions like these in a variety of daily situations and presents a concept of reality that has no mercy for the squeamish mind. He approaches his reader with such intensity that one cannot look away, one is forced to follow his reasoning to its unconventional and disturbing conclusions. Still, as the introduction points out, "Coming for the first time to the works of Sartre, Japsers, or Camus is often like reading, on page after page, one's own intimate thoughts and feelings, expressed with new precision and concreteness."

  This is an excellent novel, very thought-provoking, best approached with an open mind and the courage to listen patiently to that which may frighten one the most. Regardless of your reaction to it, Nausea will have you thinking for quite some time afterward.
  
  

• Post-war malaise or our ontological status?
  By A3EQQP0LD4Z375 on 2002-05-18
  The author of this book has now been gone from us for twenty years, existence now longer penetrates him anywhere, but his essence is preserved eloquently in this short novel via the character of Roquentien. Sartre believed that we define ourselves by the instant; we choose who we are to be continuously in time. Thus it is for our interpretation of this novel. Without taking a position on the validity of Sartre's grand system of Existentialism, one can still interpret the novel as we choose. Roquentien can be a character engaging in excessive introspection, embedded in a European post-war malaise, or a philosophical anti-hero struggling for the raw, naked truth as to our ontological status. His inquisitiveness entails that he notices everything; the roots and bark of the chestnet tree, the dry mud, the laurel, and also, and most importantly, he notices the absence of things; he experiences their negation. For Roquentien, a caricature of early 20th century phenomonalist philosophy, experiencing the negation is a central element of Sartre's philosophy. But Roquentien, terrified of his existence, should really not have been too surprised at his experience in the park, his confrontation with existence "with the veil torn away". The human mind, especially a mind like Roquentien's, who is very involved in life and his surroundings, will grant access to phenomena that one chooses. Roquentian wanted to experience the bare nakedness of existence; to see things stripped of labels. Goal-directed consciousness will allow such access, with an intensity that is equal to that of any other problem-solving activity. Mental focus grants an awareness of the Roquentien kind, but it is spontaneous, and sometimes delayed in its action. The time scales involved do not always meet the expectations of the person involved. The veil was lifted for Roquentien without his volition at that instant, but it was a consequence of his earlier musings and longings. Interestingly, Roquentien feels adventerous after this experience, and makes the decision to leave for Paris. His goal was satisfied with the experiencing-of-the-park...time to move on to others.
  
  
• Complex and raw but not a classic
  By A2WFLPOH43G4V9 on 2000-07-04
  I read "Nausea" wanting to see Sarte's other work besides his plays and philosophy. This Novel is both challenging but doesn't quit hit the bulls eye and has a poor ending for the point Sarte's trying to get across.

  "Nausea" is about a writer Antoine Roquentin who keeps a diary of his day to day life and catalouges his emotions and explores them deeply. In the beginning of the novel, Roquentin throws a rock into a river and feels something extreme but doesn't know what it is. From there he explores his own existence and soul. Later on he finds powerful truths about life and existence.

  One problem I had with this book is that the main charector is so empty and lonely to begin with, I knew he would be horrifed with his own existence and gives us no hope. However I loved this novel for Sarte's ideas on existence, life, people, art, innocence, loneliness etc... and its worth reading for this factor even if there are some flaws and the ending isn't really awarding.

  I read one reviewer's comment on this book on Amazon( Sorry I don't have the reviewer's name) which I really felt true, which meant something like 'If Existence is meaningless why didn't Sarte kill himself?'. Existentialism is some of the most true writing in the world but you can't believe it to an extreme. If existence is meaningless then you've just wasted life in vain of others. However I'll spare you my philosophy and conclude this review by saying this novel is very much worth reading but is not an existentialist classic. Check out Camu's "The Stranger" and Sarte's "No Exit" for classic existentialist works.
  
  

• awful book, awful people, silly message
  By AUM3YMZ0YRJE0 on 2003-12-10
  Sartre built a career as a misanthropic intellectual. His characters (and his analyses) brim with the most total alienation imaginable, with the strong dose of narcissism that comes along with slef-declared geniuses. The protagonist of this novel is a bored scholar, researching an ancestor. He is incapable of love and in the grips of a depression and loathing that fill him with waves of nausea. That is it in this novel! There is meaning in nothing. The only thing I felt reading about these sick people was nausea - and boredom.

  In writing a negative review of such a famous novel, I know there will be lots who disagree, but I am sick of novels like this that are held up by a national cultural establishment as "great," i.e. enhancing their international image, rather than works that should be read more openly and naively. You can tell the difference in so many media: look at Michelangelo and you immediately feel his genius, whereas if you fail to perceive the artistic "value" of many contemporary works, you are condemned as lacking the finesse and brains to see what you are told to see.

  Not recommended. This is the ideal novel for a high school student to read ostentatiously, exhibiting some kind of "depth."
  
  

• Man Without A Mission
  By A33WJ3UVUMOUSQ on 2003-11-08
  Those who look carefully at the book's cover will notice that the gentleman's hand, as if feeling his heartbeat, makes up the lips of the larger portrait image of himself, superimposed on the former, smaller self. Was this an aesthetic decision on the part of the publishers? Or does it serve to implicate the essence of the novel- the fractured self?

  The novel is more than just about existentialism (the idea that asserts existence over essence, commonly attributed to the lack of God and Intrinsic Meaning), it is about a man's ambivalence with trying to be an emotional human while contemplating said belief.

  Nausea may be the companion novel to Camus' more lyrical and popular, "The Stranger". They are both first person accounts of men who wander around all day with nothing to do or believe. All they are left with are their thoughts, and the relentless drone of their own restless consciousness. However, the narrator in Nausea is a deeper thinker. He goes to the library and talks with 'the learned man', he contemplates the black bark of a tree and awakens to 'nothingness', he is more self-aware, more pensive, less ironic than Camus' hero, who truly doesn't care about anything.

  Before reader's dismiss such men as self-absorbed philistines, it is important to understand the context of such writings: Europe, mostly France, between or directly after the two World Wars. It was time of moral breakdown and relativity, when humans had proven to eachother that perhaps there wasn't a God. Sartre's solution was sobering and brave: Mankind's existence without essence, pure and empty. Follow our narrator, one entry at a time, one endless walk at a time, as he tries to make the most of what he has: nothing.
  
  

• Sweet Sickness
  By on 1999-03-01
  Nausea what kind of a name is that for a book? The sick sweetness of existence. This book exudes the rawness and horror of existence. Antonie Roquentin finds himself in a world with no depth; no reality or concreteness Antoine is horrified of his very existence. The book is a process of Antoine coming to this realization. What he discovers is that we live in a world of shadows and illusions, intellectual constructs that we use to explain the world around us. Freedom, justice, love, humanity, we discover have no reality of their own. Antoine discovers that his very identity has no real reality other then what is in his mind at that very moment. He realizes for something to be real he has to decide consciously to focus on it, that his reality as a person is completely reliant on a moment of consciousness. Even then he doesn't know what it means. Let me feel myself very well, I am so forgotten. The only real thing left in me is existence which feels it exists. I yawn lengthily. No one. Antoine Roquentin? An abstraction. A pale reflection of myself wavers in my consciousness. Antoine Roquentin. . . and suddenly the "I" pales, pales and fades out.

  Sartre through out this book tries to make the point that consciousness has no identity. That things are perceived and they exist and nothing more! They are what they are. That by naming something we are changing what it is in our minds. Sartre doesn't believe that a chair is a chair. He asks, is the chair the object in front of us, or is it an idea in our minds? In other words existence proceeds essence. He affirms that we live in a word of existents, not the essences of our language. To get a better idea of what he is saying I quote his famous example of the chestnut the tufts of yellow grass, the dry mud, the tree, the sky, the green benches. Absurd, nature-could explain it. Evidently I did not know everything, this great wrinkled paw, neither ignorance nor knowledge was existence. A circle is not absurd, it is clearly explained by the rotation of a straight segment around one of it's extremities. But neither does a circle exist. This root, on the other hand, existed in such a way that I could not explain it. Knotty, inert, nameless, it fascinated me, filled my eyes, brought me back unceasingly to its own existence. In vain to to that, to this hard and compact skin of a sea lion, to this oily, understand generally that is was a root, but not that one at all."

  Many will say that Sartre isn't a true existentialist, because of this dichotomy he draws. Descartes once pronounced "I think therefore I exist". Sartre has changed this in that he has separated the "I" from the think, and pronounced that nothing but consciousness remains, and that the "I" is an essence and not an existent so doesn't exist. So what does this have to do with whether Sartre is a true existentialist? Some would say that by dividing the world into essence versus existence Sartre is contradicting the very point he is trying to make. That by separating the world into existents and essence he is placing an essence on the universe. Heidegger doesn't do that he refers to it all as Dasein or crudely but "a field of being. " Making no claims or imposing some kind of meaning on it. No dichotomy is placed on existence it just is.

  In summary I found this book eloquently explained so many of my feelings and doubts as an existentialist. I would recommend it to anybody that was interested in existentialism it makes an excellent introduction. I feel that it is also an excellent exposition of the human condition
  
  

• Depicts an existential option not to be lightly chosen
  By on 1997-07-01
  This is a literary, not a philosophical work, but it deals with issues fundamental to the human quest for meaning and with the question of our relation to being. Sartre paints a portrait of a life lived in reaction to the seeming absurdities underlying the most fundamental metaphysical principles. The reaction is poetic: in place of the romantic poet's ecstatic embrace of the natural world is found a poetic nausea in reaction to the meaninglessness and unjustifiability of this world. It is not to be taken as a "proof" of any sort, but as brilliant and terrifying artistic vision of a life lived in accordance with the existential option to reject rather than to embrace the whole of Being.

  As always, Sartre's language and style are such as should make most contemporary claimants to the title "existentialist" lay down their miserable pens and write no more. His hero's rejection of an unjustifiable world is justified, as Nietzsche would have it, aesthetically--by Sartre's transformation of the horror of nausea into an artistic masterpiece.

  Not a book to be recommended to those too easily swayed by something that sounds "deep," rather, a book which should jolt the sincere but naiive out of their complacency, and which any seeker after the ultimate significance of things--if there is an ultimate significance, and if there are things--ought take into consideration. And, of course, for the mere esthetes who too rarely find art unburdened by kitsch--well, if there are any such out there, you've already read it, and there's nothing I can tell you that you don't already know
  
  

• Sartre Succeeds
  By AL5D52NA8F67F on 2001-01-01
  If you like warm, fuzzy literature, this story isn't for you. If you prefer to read fiction that agrees with what you already think, or helps you sleep at night, this story isn't for you. However, if you enjoy engaging, incredibly well-written, (and superbly translated), literature, you will enjoy this book. "Nausea", like "Woman in the Dunes" by Kobo Abe, is not an easy or comfortable story to plow through, but it is a fascinating and superb story. Also, don't pass this book if you are intimidated by all the high falutin' philosophy talk; enjoy this book as the remarkable, if disturbing story, that it is. Excellent reading.
  
  
• an experience which can change your life
  By on 2001-06-13
  I found this book to be one of the toughest to bear, not because it's badly written, but because its search for truth touches the lower depths of existence. It is profoundly significant and tackles subjects that anyone who has thought about existence can identify with.

  Also, it deserves the chance of being read fully. Most of the critics who've commented seem to miss the point of its finale.

  What's optimism if we can't bear to look at ourselves? This book does so, and is meant for readers who can stomach truth.

  It's been pointed out that this is philosophy & not literature: It is a combination of both, as any great book is. Pure literature is fluff, pure philosophy is dense: This book is a wonderful mix of both worlds, taking what's best from each.
  
  

• Brace yourself for Existentialism 101
  By A2CVVCODXDVJO6 on 2002-01-15
  Existentialism is a horribly broad term that has lumped together quite a motley collection of ideas. From Dostoyevsky and Kierkegaard's God-infused to Nietzsche's Godless scrutiny of individual struggle, existentialism remains a vague caption for all thoughts concerned with man's experience, alone and in a mass.

  So what did Jean-Paul Sartre, once described as the most brilliant Frenchman of the twentieth century, have to offer to modern inquisitors? In Nausea, his first major work, Sartre promulgates his own creeds through the listless eyes of a writer Antoine Roquentin. Like the fictional intellectuals before him, Roquentin finds himself paused and later haunted by the great question of existence. Unable to continue in his historic research on Marquis de Rollebon, Roquentin is seized by a nausea of the mind that ponders the point of existence. In the famous chestnut tree scene, Roquentin confronts the nausea by feeling the strangle on man by the two moieties of life: existence and essence. Sartre explains that essence includes all the physical properties and in my opinion those understood and replicable by science. Existence on the other hand, is purely a product of the cognitive, therefore one either knows he exists or he doesn't. Roquentin experiences the acute prick of his existence and thinks himself freed from the common lot because of his acknowledgement. But trapped in the same pessimistic realm of Nietzsche, Roquentin finds the world a place of terrible voids and he himself unable to take advantage of the freedom of choices. Alone and without a purpose, Roquentin nonetheless chooses an optimistic enough ending by moving to Paris to pursue fiction writing.

  Unlike other philosophers, Sartre was also a marvelous dramatist and novelist whose craft could be appreciated for its literary value alone. And so lurking behind Roquentin's stream-of-conscious narrative, his dry humor, and caricature-like surroundings is Sartre's contribution which leads straight to the core of existentialism's concern with the individual struggle against isolation in a hostile world.
  
  

• Self-absorbed, but not self-admiring
  By AHXAPVSHPJ6OJ on 2004-06-06
  Antoine Roquentin, the protagonist of Sartre's "Nausea," is a man who stands in awe of himself. No, he's not an egotist or a narcissist in the self-admiring sense; he is completely and intensely absorbed in the contemplation of his own existence. That is to say, he constantly ponders the fact he exists, that there is a consciousness connected to a body whose collective name is Antoine Roquentin. For some, the reaction to such a realization might be wonder and amazement, perhaps an acknowledgement of the omnipotence of a higher power; for Antoine, the reaction is horror, a perception of the void enshrouding existence, leading to a feeling of what he calls nausea.

  To evade the nausea, Antoine immerses himself in the study of those that have existed in the past, and he is currently in the city of Bouville (possibly a renamed Boulogne), France, researching the history of the Marquis de Rollebon, a courtier of Marie Antoinette and a most adventurous scoundrel. The ordinariness of Antoine's career emphasizes the absurdity of existence in a world designed for those who are content to live the unexamined life. At the local library, he makes the acquaintance of a Self-Taught Man (the only name by which he is known) who endeavors to educate himself by reading every book available to him, in alphabetical order. The Self-Taught Man, an ex-soldier who had spent some time as a prisoner of war, is the essence of bourgeois humanism and optimism; he mistakes Antoine's inquiries into existence for a search for the meaning of life. Another perspective on existence is given by Antoine's snide ex-girlfriend Anny, whose childhood experiences have led her to the conclusion that death, or dying, is a "privileged situation" because of the importance it is attributed not only in actuality but as the subject in so many works of art, where it is portrayed as the transcendence of existence.

  Written in the style of a diary, "Nausea" reads like a memoir containing many personalized aphorisms about existence and its opposite, nothingness, which ironically also must exist; but these are too subjective to be universally useful. Rather, the novel's biggest triumph is the convincing expressiveness of Sartre's protagonist, who manages to convey in lucid language the ideas behind coming to terms with one's own existence. Antoine may be morose and introverted, but he is an excellent analyst of nature and has intellectual energy to spare.
  
  

• a work of art
  By A1F4OCYSZ7P7RX on 2002-09-28
  I want to respectfully disagree with the review by timmyjones. The opinion of anyone who has read Sartre's philosophy as well as much of his fiction is valuable, but I think that it is because you have read the philosophy first, as you say, that you can only see it, and nothing else, in what I consider to be the art.

  Admittedly, It has been several years since I read the book. However, there are several scenes which stand out in my memory. The card players, the intense examination of the portrait paintings, and the jazz record at the end are all fascinating scenes. Also, the character (I can't remember the name) who reads each book in the library from A to Z is very interesting.

  The one scene in which the philosophy does seem to be thinly veiled is the one which deals with the problem of "perfect moments." However, even this scene, to me, is more than acceptable. In fact, I think it is one of the most powerful scenes.

  In sum, I recommend "Nausea" strongly. Also, among the stories in "The Wall," I recommend "Erostratus" and "The Wall."

  I can still remember my favorite line from "Nausea" (at least I think this is how it goes): "This is time, time laid bare, coming slowly into existence, keeping us waiting, and when it does come, making us sick because we realize it has been there all along."
  
  

• wkrc wcpo cpo
  By AQVBUN1EDK4EY on 2005-04-22
  I guess.... not think... that about now, krc, you are beginning
  to have some existential vagaries.
  
  An unctuous feeling about the causality of your uvula...
  
  swallowing, hearing the swallow... and the exit no exit
  of hearing door knobs..
  
  There is an upwelling from the closure of your uvula in
  swallowing...
  
  You feel the vague dread coming on... ad nauseum.
  
  affirmative negative... a n
  
  am i really wallowing now
  
  
• to exist or not to exist
  By A367ZZVSTNCC0D on 2005-05-07
  "i am. i am, i exist, i think, therefore i am; i am because i think, why do i think? i don't want to think anymore, i am because i think i don't want to be..."
  
  welcome to the mind of antoine roquentin the protagonist of sartre's famous novel. written in diary form, sartre explores the meaning of existence thru this character as he tries to understand a feeling of nausea that has entered his life. the book is a means for sartre to explore his existential view of life. it is filled with profound thoughts.
  
  i do not profess to clearly understand much less follow an existential point of view. this book does not do alot to clarify it either. what it does do, however, is plant seeds of thought into your head that will not go away.
  
  if you have never read any sartre, this is not where i would begin. i'd start with "the age of reason" the first book in his "roads to freedom" trilogy. that's as good a place as any to dip your toe into this genius's thought process. then work your way up to this book.
  
  this is my 4th sartre novel in 6 months. i enjoyed them all. they have the power to change your life. how many books can do that!
  
  
• Full of existential angst!
  By A3D7L0R1281COX on 2005-11-04
  Sartre's Nausea is a manifesto of existential angst, and ranks as one of the most celebrated philisophical novels of the last century. In his dairy enteries, the protagonist enters seemingly trivial details about his daily chores, thoughts, fears and acquaintances and through them reflects upon deep questions about his own existence and his being. Throughout the novel, the reader finds himself looking at his own self, his own world and identifying with the angst of one's being. A classic, must read for anyone who ponders on the meaning of the being, the point of our existence and is at war with himself. The novel does not necessary provide the answers to any of these questions, but provides enough spark to ignite the spirit of enquiry in one's mind!
  
  
• Dismally bad
  By A33FA68V0NCM5E on 2001-04-30
  "Nausea" by Jean-Paul Sartre, has been hailed as his first extended essay on the existential philosophy that has made him famous. The novel consists of the thoughts and experiences (which are displaced into a journal format) of Antonin, an alienated intellectual who falls prey to the feeling of the existential Nausea, as he attempts, nihilistically, to purge himself of the "sin of existence". The novel, Sartre's first, is blighted by the main fault to which beginners are vulnerable, namely, blatantly making their texts a vehicle for their own philosophical views. Too much of the story is taken up by the hero's obsession with a gramophone record, though one man's obsession may be another man's tedium. The plot lacks any sense of drive, the main character simply fails to engage the reader's sympathy and the result is a book which is amateurish, plodding and just plain boring.
  
  
• Great Novel!
  By A18ZRLEJTTPN90 on 1999-09-29
  Nausea and Essays in Existentialism are, in my opinion, the best places to start learning about Sartre's philosophical views. I think these texts are more accessible than Being and Nothingness.

  While reading Nausea I got the impression that Sartre described a more pessimistic view of our condition than in his later writings. In Nausea he seems to be saying that there is no meaning to our existence, while later he will say that we choose the essence or meaning of our existence ourselves, by the acts that we continuously perform.
  
  

• Thoughtful and interesting
  By AZZU8I8JR8XON on 2001-04-20
  I have to say that I believe that this is surely one of the finest evocation of existentialist torment ever put to paper. The story is that of a lonely man in a small town where there's nothing for him to do except question if there is any real meaning to his life. This leads to some wonderful descriptive passages which bring to mind such moments of torment in everybody's lives. The story is not exactly up to much but that is of little importance since the point of the book is very different to most books. This is a philosophical novel and, therefore, it is mainly meant to put across the author's philosophical beliefs. It's not quite Dostoevsky but it does nonetheless have much to recommend it. It is a bit depressing though when you begin yourself to wonder what's the point of it all. Although you really have to ask yourself: " If Sartre really thought all of this, why did he bother to write the book in the first place?" Everybody should read this book, as long as they're not fans of Maeve Binchy or John Grisham.
  
  
• Solitude drives you crazy.
  By on 2003-11-12
  I doubt that's what Sartre intended as the moral of his book, but that's what I got out of it. Anyone would go crazy after living without meaningful relationships for 4 years. People who are totally alone don't have a clearer conception of the world than other people - they have a distorted understanding. Objects are grotesque and absurd when they exist in isolation ; they become meaningful through relationships with other objects.
  
  
• Nothing need be as it is - and nothing is necessary- Sartre on the superfluity of humanity
  By AHD101501WCN1 on 2004-10-29
  Hannah Arendt claimed that this is Sartre's best book. I do not like it very much.
  Camus could write of life's absurdity in a beautiful way. Sartre writes of the vague repulsion his Roquentin feels toward his existence and everyone else's without the same kind of literary and aesthetic appeal.
  He is overwhelmed by his sense of life 's contingency. Nothing need be as it is .
  This means he sees himself as superflous.
  Along the way he meets someone called the 'Self- Made Man' who has a positive approach to life, believes in the idea that through action one can make meaning. Roquentin listens intently to him but at a certain point feels 'nausea' again, the same nausea which he felt at the outset of the novel when first touching a wet- pebble.
  This is one way of feeling and seeing the world, but life and literature are filled with many others more humanly interesting and meaningful.
  Even loneliness and boredom can be better than this.
  
  
• When schizofrenia meets philosophy
  By A6F7UR2G47I91 on 2008-01-23
  When Sartre wrote this, he was just a young budding writer, and it's surprising to see how mature and 'old and resigned' this novel sounds. Absolutely not in the style of a young man. Quite astonishing. You will find this a very strange book, with basically no real story behind it, the main character himself is just an excuse for an exposition of Sartre's ideas about life... actually more than about ideas, it's actually about Sartre's instinctive feel and intuition for life, about life more 'natural' (in the sense of mindless and mechanical) , repetitive, absurd and repulsive aspect of life. To give you an idea, that kind of "feel" that would make you think of a fat spider while you are holding another person hand into yours or just looking at it moving on a desk. That kind of sensation and feel that borders on repulsive hallucination, and yes in case you are wondering, Sartre was occasionally affected by hallucinations, and I guess this particular mental vulnerability contributed to his great insight and intuition about the more obscure and celebrate aspect of existence. So give this a try, it's a very different kind of book, even if usually quite overrated, just because "sartre sounds very high culture'. This book does get boring after it has made its point, and the more fascinating and best written parts are actually the marginal ones, like the short section about the main character meeting and ex lover and reminiscing about the various psychological folds of their relationship. The end of the book tries to put forward some kind of 'solution' to the main character 'nausea of life' but it ends up being quite naive. One is tempted say: "Hey did it really take a whole book to say that?". So, in the end, an intriguing book to read, but it does border on mental masturbation...
  
  
  
• if you like novels . . . skip this one!
  By on 1999-04-24
  I have to say this is one of my least favorite novels of all time. In fact, as you may be able to tell from the reviews below,it's not really much of a novel at all, but a philosophical treatise written in diary form. Now, I don't have a problem with that, in and of itself: for example, I love Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, the first half of which is devoted to expounding the Underground Man's philosophical views. No, the problem with this book is that it's boring! Sartre's character's "nausea" seems very studied, the angst of a man who's read The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge and decided that fashionable alienation is the way to go. I know that existentialism was all the rage twenty or thirty years ago, but now that it has become passe and the hype is all over, we can see a book like this for what it is: tedious and self-indulgent. (At least Camus was a talented story-teller.) And the punchline to the whole thing is that Sartre's conclusion is actually pretty sentimental: if I recall correctly, his protagonist discovers solace in listening to a Jazz record. Ah, the simple things in life! By all means, listen to a jazz record - or even a Spice Girls record - instead of wasting your time with a phony book like this!
  
  
• Effective and shocking, but contrived and awkward
  By A2S1GKZJVJ6M6S on 1997-08-16
  Having read many magnificent authors of existentialist fiction, from Camus to Dostoyevsky to Mishima to Laxness to Selimovic to Abe, I picked up Nausea, a work by an author whose name is synonymous with his philosophical movement. I was very disappointed, however, in Nausea's tone, theme, and progression. It is intended to be a work of literature, not a work of philosophy, but at times I wished Sartre had discarded the pretense of writing a literary masterpiece and presented a mature treatise on existentialism. I always feel that a valid philosophy (or theology) should be easily evident in a real (or literary) situation, and does not require an endless philosophical dissection. While existential literature is often bleak, that is a function of the philosophy itself. Nausea, however, is simply bland. The narrator is without charisma, and therefore can hardly be identified with, and his experience of 'nausea' at his own existence is ultimately tedious and unrealistic. Unlike certain magnificent literary expositions of existentialism, like "The Woman in the Dunes" by Kobo Abe, and "Death and the Dervish" by Mesa Selimovic, "Nausea" did little more than whet my appetite for a better existentialist work and leave me with an unpleasant taste in my mouth. In short, Sartre missed the mark--he tried so hard to paint this portrait of meaningless bleakness that his novel has all the life of a smudged black and white newsprint photo. Nonetheless, it is very short and worth reading just for the perspective, but "No Exit" is a far superior venture on Sartre's part
  
  

• The Stranger
• Being And Nothingness
• The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays
• No Exit and Three Other Plays
• The Plague