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NAUSEA
December 9, 2011
On re-reading
Sartre's "Nausea"
(1918, 1938
translation).
I thought I'd only read this
The writing is very tight, once before, in 1980, but
very clever. The torment of the copy I have is not the
"contingency" is brought in one I remember, and I've I missed
early, as is the ways that clearly read it before, I a decade:
individual identity depends on would guess circa 1990. skipped
others. Knowing Sartre's It has post-it tabs in it, 2000.
obsessions, you can see them but they're monochromatic,
methodically threaded through from back before I developed
the text. my color code. TABS
And clearly, just as I This edition is a slim,
remembered it (for once), the tradepaperback with a black
central schtick of the novel and white high-constrast image
is tremendously romantic... (a picture of a shirtless man
the main character is feeling looking sick to his stomach,
strange, and his feelings stupidly enough).
have some tremendous
metaphysical significance. The one I remember was a
paperback, probably a penguin,
Funny, he doesn't The fall with some sort of classical
just get a of the painting on the cover of some
prescription for house of mythlogical scene (an angel
anti-depressants. contingency. wrestling a serpent?). Quite
Or go on a diet. symbolic, no doubt.
Or watch re-runs
of Seinfeld. IN_THE_IRON_MASK
It may be we've gone
too far in this direction:
everything is deflated,
mundane. All diseases are
diseases of the body.
But something that
seems like existential
torment may really be
existential torment.
Or something like it.
The general schtick of
"Nausea" does seem peculiar--
the main character "wakes up",
and begins seeing objects SURROUNDED_BY_STORIES
clearly for the first time.
But he does not experience
this as an occasion for joy...
He's not stunned by beauty TRICK_OF_ATTENTION
everywhere, but instead he has
attacks of "nausea" produced AMERICANBEAUTY
by beginning to percieve the
true nature of existence.
This was Sartre's first novel,
and it's this sort of schtick
that no doubt produced a Not to
reputation of being Serious mention
and Depressing. that play
"No Exit".
Existentialism as a
philosophy for suicides.
But then, Nausea itself
ends on a tentative
hopeful note, and
some of his later One of my
works are positively favorites
life-affirming. is the
play "Kean"
As one
of my
brothers
The business with the card commented:
players in the cafe is "Whoa, he
absolutely beautiful -- he did happy
enters, he's strangely endings?"
alienated, he watches the
card players, and can't VILLON
imagine why they bother.
Just passing time?
Then he listens to the old
ragtime 78 he's fond of, From my first reading, I
listens to the "negress" remember having the vauge
sing, and his disease is impression that the music
temporarily alieviated. was something like Billie
Holliday-- because I can
He looks at the card imagine that being something
players again, and sees to cure your ills.
them as fellow humans, at
play in a field of But this is a novel
infinite contigency. from an earlier time.
Here, ideas are not Instead it's some ragtime
forced on character and piece. Faster and more upbeat?
circumstance, there's no
particular doctrine that No, not really: it's an
the author is insisting I'm-being-broken-up-with
on: rather it's a story song: "Some of these days/
about the way ideas you'll miss me honey...",
interact with character and that phrase "Some of
and circumstance, the way these days" can indeed
things seem different one get stuck in your head.
moment from the next
without any obvious ref
objective change...
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