Nausea, by Jean-Paul Sartre
A MAN SITS in a café, watching a fly warming itself in the sunlight. The man, Antoine Roquentin, the narrator, who is caught up in the ordeal of writing a history book he has lost interest in, decides to kill the fly. His companion, the Autodidact, a tormented older man, objects. But it has been decided.
"I have relieved it of its existence." The fly's problems are over; but the narrator's aren't: "Why am I here? - And why shouldn't I be here? It is midday, I am waiting for it to be time to sleep. . . In four days I shall see Anny again: for the moment, that is my only reason for living."
Born in 1905, the year before Samuel Beckett whose laconic humour surfaces throughout this lively, fluidly written first novel, Jean-Paul Sartre remains one of the giants of 20th century intellectual thought. Nauseais a study in alienation; it is also a statement of intent. Here Sartre offers an engaging introduction to his defining theory of existentialism. Roquentin is self absorbed, depressed yet sympathetic; his relentless questioning of existence is above all supremely logical, even familiar.
Returning to this novel, one of those seminal works most first encounter as school-going readers attempting to experience "serious" literature, is a revelation. Sartre's reputation has become so bound up with political causes, his famous ego and the saga of his highly public private life, that it is unfortunately all too easy to overlook the grace, playfulness and punchy wit which sustain Nausea.
Having travelled widely, the narrator has made a base in a French provincial town. There he spends his days drifting between the library and the local café. He has begun to feel aware of a disturbing sensation, an unease he dubs the Nausea. He believes he should write it all down: "The odd thing is that I am not at all prepared to consider myself insane, and indeed I can see quite clearly that I am not: all these changes concern objects."
Within minutes this confidence has been undermined. In his first formal diary entry he concedes that being a historian is no preparation for psychological analysis. His heightened consciousness begins to respond to everything, the notion of being is consistently under scrutiny. "Just now, when I was on the point of coming into my room, I stopped short because I felt in my hand a cold object which attracted my attention by means of a sort of personality. I opened my hand and looked: I was simply holding the doorknob."
Sartre brilliantly conveys Roquentin's efforts to maintain a balance between his thoughts and his fears. A measure of comfort is to be gleaned from watching others. "I am alone in the midst of these happy, reasonable voices," he notes while sitting in the café, "all these characters spend their time explaining themselves, and happily recognizing that they hold the same opinions."
Listening in the café to a recording of a jazz tune sung by a black girl has become a personal ritual for him. Late in the narrative, after meeting a somewhat altered Anny in Paris, Roquentin returns briefly to Bouville and visits the café. The waitress offers to play the record. As he listens, Roquentin thinks of the American who wrote it, suffocating in the New York heat.
In Nausea, Sartre observes, considers and explores the essence of existence and in doing so makes the reader think that bit more clearly, more deeply.
• This is a weekly series in which Eileen Battersby revisits titles from the literary canon
