When schizofrenia meets philosophy

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	• Nausea Jean-Paul Sartre New Directions, 2007 - 192 pages average customer review:based on 90 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Not an essay!

Picking up this book, I was expecting a philosophical essay, since that's what I've become accustomed to reading from famous philosophers. As I began to read "Nausea", however, it was soon clear that this was a work of fiction, but based around his own philosophical ideas: "philosofiction". This is the first thing from Sartre that I have read, but it won't be the last.

His writing style is really incredible. The solitary figure he creates is wonderfully sick, innocent, sinister, amiable, a truly three-dimensional character. Sartre's imagery is clear, yet subtle in its sickness. I actually began to feel naseous myself a few times reading it; it's just one of those books that has a sort of ineffable feeling pervading from it.

I definitely recommend reading it, if not for the philosophy, then definitely for an extremely well-written novel.

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When schizofrenia meets philosophy

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...

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Over rated author.

I'll open by saying I've always found Sartre overly pretentcious, much preferring the writing of Camus (both literiture and philosophy). Though Sartre undeniably has had a huge impact on modern philosophy through his academic writings (for which he owes Dovstoyevski, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Heideggar obvious debt) I find him overly boring. This novel is not bad, its just that the protagonist is unlikeable- he doesn't seem to do anything, which isn't really an answer to the existential dilema of the nihilist dissolution it seems Sartre tried to see through in his works, rather he seems to pissfart around his own nuerosies. The themes come through well enough it's just that the work doesn't reach out and grab me with emotional intensity as Thus Spake Zarathustra does, nor is their any attractivness of the sheer cold honesty of Camus's protagonist in L'Etranger. There are much better philosphical (particularly existential) novels out there than this one such as L'Etranger, Stepphenwolf, Damien and the classic Brothers Karazamov (wordy as it is). Contry to some impressions, Sartre did not discover or invent existentialism (it can't even be called an 'ism' there is way to much variation), he simply siezed onto the ideas of those who came before him. I would respectfully (perhaps stuffily)suggest that his ending answer to nihilism is to commit to communism ( whatever the original intentions of this system it destroys individuality and despises spiritual and existential crises) is laughable, but that is for adifferent review. Nausea is like the matrix movies- a great idea with heaps of hype but done very badly and lacking in substance.

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reviews: 1, page 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

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