Nausea: A Personal Assessment

Nausea is a book that impressed me a lot. I class it as formative reading. In this brief post, I will not make arguments as such. Rather, I am going to write why this book had an emotional impact upon me when I read it. I am going more for a ‘cheesy op-ed’ vibe rather than a ‘scholarly’ one.

When I read Nausea, I had scarcely imbibed any philosophy. I have read a little more philosophy since. Hence, I did not have the remotest framework to understand the ‘philosophical thesis’ expounded by the text. ‘Thesis’ sounds problematic given that this is a novel, not a philosophical tract.

Apparently, this is the closest a work of fiction has come to being called ‘a philosophical novel,’ according to Iris Murdoch. Surely, a work of philosophy is more ‘holistic’ than fragmentary or plural. It offers a thesis. Nausea is more plural in that there are little tid-bits here and there of philosophising scattered around the text. Surely, a novel can be ‘philosophical’ in so far as it draws from philosophy, but it is not philosophical in that it doesn’t use the same methods. More often than not, a ‘philosophical novel’ brims with arguments, but it doesn’t offer a single thesis which is arrived at inductively. My idea of an exciting novel is one which is completely against the idea of having a thesis. My idea of an exciting novel is one which is ambiguous and anti-didactic. A novel that has any philosophy in it derives its material from philosophy and plays around with it. You can broach philosophical questions in a much more haphazard way. You don’t have to do it properly because the novel is a form without rules. Anyway, let’s get abstruse theory out of the way. Basically, at the time in which I read it, I did not fully extrapolate the existential argument propounded by the book.

Nausea is the kind of novel that appeals enormously to angsty teenagers. Why? Well, because, to state the obvious, teenagers feel alienated and angsty a lot of the time… When I read it, I felt as if I ‘saw’ my life mirrored, to use a crass metaphor, in that of Antonie Roquetin, the protagonist of the book.   

Roquetin completely detaches himself from others. He is a former academic and historian. He leads a subdued existence where he goes for walks across the sea front, writes in cafés and studies at his desk. The title ‘nausea’ refers to the way in which he can no longer derive any satisfaction, or even any feeling, from anything. In a very striking scene, he jabs his hand with a knife. It bleeds profusely, yet he is utterly passive about it. He goes to galleries and he is utterly unmoved by the paintings he sees. He detests music and calls people who go to concert halls ‘mugs.’ He no longer sees a former lover. Every now and then he experiences pangs of ‘nausea.’

Basically, when I read this novel I was also a recluse and terribly alienated. More than anything, over the years I have also felt immunised from ‘enjoying’ anything in the most elementary level. I am going to give a few anecdotal examples. I equate certain types of behaviour as being ‘childlike.’ I feel as though I am seeing the mind of children trapped within the body of adults. It is just adults having fun. When I go to clubs and I see people dancing, I see it as an utterly childlike expression. I feel the same bemused reaction when I see people take ‘selfies.’ It makes me think of them as being ingenuous. How can they go along with trends which seem so utterly artificial? Worse still, I feel as though time passes extremely quickly. While I am isolated in my room, everyone outside is busy having fun. I find their idea of fun utterly perplexing. The next thing I know, all the people I know are busy having children and getting married. Meanwhile, I am still in my room, utterly frustrated because I have not achieved the goals I have set for myself. Hence, I find the sense of alienation that Roquetin experiences, and his immunity to ‘satisfaction,’ very relatable.

I found this novel a far more relatable experience than Camus’ The Outsider. I think that’s down to the fact that Mersault is such a wooden and two-dimensional character. Mersault, although an intelligent and educated person, is perhaps so immunised that he cannot really even bring himself to articulate his sense of alienation. He reacts to his environment, ultimately, in a very primal way. The universe is absurd and there is no universal moral imperative, but Mersault merely reacts to this by murdering a group of people in a completely random way. Roqeutin, meanwhile, retreats into introspective despair. Psychologically, this makes for a much richer experience.

Ultimately, I am not entirely ‘mirrored’ by Roquetin. He is much more educated than I am. I am perhaps closer in spirit to the character ‘The Autodidact.’ When Roquetin meets The Autodidact, he finds him to be a sweet, and ultimately deluded, character. He has no real education, but he is determined to read as much as he can and build a belief system in the process. Roquetin looks down on The Autodidact, but still views him with some affection. He describes him as reading every volume in the library and, once that happens, he will ask himself ‘and now what?’ This goes completely against the grain of the vision that Jorge Luis Borges had in his story ‘The Library of Babel.’ In that story, all of the books ever written are held there. In addition to that, every single variation of an individual book is held there. Books containing gibberish are held in the library. Once one reads every single book, they reappear. Hence, Borges is saying that one can never attain complete knowledge, even if one were some sort of divine entity capable of reading the entire canon of human knowledge. Knowledge keeps growing. One’s perception of something is always open to re-evaluation. Sartre’s view seems a lot more pessimistic than Borges’. Perhaps one can never attain true knowledge, but even if one did – so what? Perhaps, what’s more important is to stake a political position and to gain experience.

Perhaps disappointingly, the novel ends in a clichéd way. Roquetin proclaims (I am paraphrasing here) ‘Oh, I will leave reclusion and my study area! Oh yes, I will become a writer – a novelist!’ This is somewhat similar to the ending of Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist, which is similarly sentimental. But then, Joyce is so creative with his use of language in those passages that it remains worthwhile. Anyway. Nausea is one of my favourite novels for a number of reasons and one of the most important books I read in my formative years.