Right at the beginning, it needs to be told that this is not an easy book to read nor is it a quick read. The main reason for me to read it, is the continuation of a long journey of mine in reading Existentialist literature, and more recently, as a per-requisite to read Mahesh Hapugoda's Existentialism and Post-War Literature ( I read /watched Beckett's "waiting for Godot", late last year, and I still have to read Sartre's short story collection, "The Wall"). However reading Sartre is much more challenging than reading, say, Camus - for, there is no plot, the whole narration comprises of diary entries in which, the main character, Antoine Roquentin, explains the nature of his relationship with a few people, (chief of which is, with his ex-wife Anny), and his explorations into existentialism, and its meaning, or its lack of. While it is clear that he still loves Anny, and would take any chance to get back with her, he is troubled by the true nature of the phenomenon of existence. It is to the study of this area that the majority of the book is focused, by way of the meditations, and ideas of Roquentin. The Nausea, which is of import to our protagonist in a negative sense, arises from a sense of nausea that results through his inability to interpret himself outside of objects and situations. It is these meditations on the nature of existence - its superfluity, the transient nature which results in an intangibility of existence - that make this book rewarding.
“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.”However, these gems needs to be filtered out from a flow, which overall although not noise, is still a dense flow of words, not all of which could resonate with the reader. Examples of these gems are:
"This is what I have been thinking: for the most commonplace event to become an adventure, you must - and this is all that is necessary - start recounting it. This is what fools people: a man is always a teller of tales, he lives surrounded by his stories and the stories of others, he sees everything that happens to him though them; and he tries to live his life as if he were recounting it."Stories, acts, pretension, going through motions are some of the things which Antoine identifies in his observing of daily life in Bouville. Many are the little incidents that Antoine notices, and retells, as they comply with his theories.
"How I should like to tell him that he's being duped, that he's playing into the hands of self-important people. Professionals in experience? They have dragged out their lives in stupor and somnolence, they have married in a hurry, out of impatience, and they have made children at random. They have met other men in cafés, at weddings, at funerals. Now and then, caught in a current, they have struggled without understanding what was happening to them. Everything that has happened around them has begun and ended out of their sight; long obscure shapes, events from afar, have brushed rapidly past them, and when they have tried to look at them, everything was already over. And then, about forty, they baptize their stubborn little ideas and a few proverbs with the name of Experience, they begin to imitate slot machines; put a coin in the slot on the left and out come anecdotes wrapped in silver paper; put a coin in the slot on the right and you get precious pieces of advice which stick to your teeth like soft caramels."
The superfluity of life, is a comfortable, albeit a safe ignorant place to be - and is just a few steps from the age old saying - "ignorance is bliss".
The novel has no plot whatsoever, but it still ends in a positive note. Antoine imagines that a man in New York, stifled with his daily lot, troubled by none less than any other, still took time to pen down a song which is being enjoyed in a town in France. He imagines that maybe the man wanted no more than $50 for his work, but along with his singer, has brought upon the world something which the world is grateful for.
"She sings. That makes two people who are saved: the Jew and the Negress. Saved. Perhaps they thought they were lost right until the very end, drowned in existence. Yet nobody could think about me as I think about them, with this gentle feeling. Nobody, not even Anny. For me they are a little like dead people, a little like heroes of novels; they have cleansed themselves of the sin of existing. Not completely, of course - but as much as any man can. This idea suddenly bowels me over, because I didn't even hope for that anymore. I feel something timidly brushing against me and I dare not move because I am afraid it might go away. Something I didn't know anymore: a sort of joy."It is indeed a beautiful, and convincing way to conclude a novel, which brooded on the weight of existence. Yes, the duty, the work, that one does, never knowing whether it is going to be enough, whether it going to make an impact - but still tirelessly trying - which makes their existence justified, for their is no one our random existence could otherwise make meaning. It's not far from here to Sisyphus, may I dare to suggest ?
In conclusion - this is not a book for everybody. The reader would need a resolve to see through this book, and it is guaranteed to give its little pockets of pleasure in its revelations, amidst her toil. I do suspect that if she is a student of the ideas as discussed in this book, that she may return to it, as she comes across related subjects in her journey as a reader.
Rating: ****
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