Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre Review & Ponder

I'm just going to pretend I've been regularly uploading posts…of course I've posed since summer! Oh well… Moving on (and highly predictably), I've come up with another odd book review.

Review:

I found this book a while back in what I'd probably describe as the quirky hipster section (vintage type writers and big glasses at the ready) of Waterstones on a table called 'culture vulture' nestled among some if my existing favourites. I thought 'wow, this looks cool'. I read quite a bit. I underlined some nice quotes but didn't really read it properly.

I realised this when I was leafing through it on the train to London whereupon an elderly woman across from me said "are you enjoying it so far? He's [Sartre] incredible isn't he?". Was he? So far I'd established it was about this overly emotional guy who suddenly decided he wasn't free when he was unable to pick up a piece of paper from the ground!? I hadn't really thought much about what it all meant (except that some of the descriptions were lovely). My mind was wittering on as her eyes continued to widen while egerly awaiting an answer. To spare her eyeballs I replied, "umm yeah he's amazing - I think the description's of the...err..things are great. The places I mean. Like the one in the kitchen..."

With a thoughtful frown she continued, "So what do you think of the conflict between Camus and Sartre?"

....

"....great"

Thankfully she soon got off...

As a relaxed in my seat I realised I had no clue...I mean I'd even skipped the introduction. Enough of the rambling. Here's the proper review.

You know that feeling you get when you question why a tree is called a tree or imagine how big the universe is? This is it. This book is a constant drone of that feeling - of powerful, relatable, uncertainty, doubt and the frightening truths we'd rather ignore. It reveals the fragility of life we strive to hide and weakens the trembling support struts we base our ideas and society upon.

It's selfish. It is the account of an individual's existential crisis. Yet, it's also broad and giving. The tone is poetic and delicate with a dreamlike quality that tricks you into believing you are thinking about the text from a comfortable, safe distance. Then, when you close the book, you are faced with reality again but you cannot stop the words from seeping out of the pages into your own life. Satre has the power to, effortlessly, reflect your own life back to you from his creation.

Yes, that's it, its like falling down stairs in a dream. Complete with the empty, uncertain, sickness that hangs over you even when you have awoken and know you have physically escaped the dream, but perhaps not mentally.

I know it's one of those books I cannot yet fully understand to its depths and maybe I never will. However, if I have learnt one thing it's how it made me feel. Yes, all of the above feelings, but also something more...

Up to now I sound negative towards it, but it is certainly successful in its power. The power it holds to make me feel the way it does, show its ideas in my life and influence me greatly, not in any direction, not to be anyone else or do anything like anyone else but, instead, the importance of asking questions and seeing the world how it wants to be seen through my own eyes.

Favourite Quote:

“My thought is me: that's why I can't stop. I exist because I think… and I can't stop myself from thinking. At this very moment - it's frightful - if I exist, it is because I am horrified at existing. I am the one who pulls myself from the nothingness to which I aspire.”

Overall:

My advice: don't read it. It gives no answers. It only ran off with a chunk of my previously treasured pyramid of self actualisation and threw it off into the far reaches of the universe, that I am too scared to imagine in order to go looking for it. 'Nausea' is a sickening fall into the oblivion. Yet its easy to overlook. I hate it. I love it - I can't. The truth is, I now feel it doesn't really matter, after all what are words?...why is a tree a tree...and not a train or a book...I wish I could talk with the train woman again...asdfghjkl...