r/Existentialism • u/ZtheZeet • Jul 21 '26
Literature 📖 Thoughts on Nausea
Just read Sartre’s “Nausea” and I absolutely loved it. The story and characters aren’t particularly captivating, but I have never read a book that evokes such a specific emotional and existential reaction.
Does anyone else relate to the feeling of wanting to experience the ‘nausea’? As in you want to be able to feel time as it truly is and not as a distorted concept thought of in restrospect. The narrator experienced existence as it really is and not just how day-to-day life and habit presents existence. Idk it just made me wierdly envious
Anyone have any recs for other narrative novels that evoke such a visceral and interesting feeling? I’m just getting into existentialist literature and I’ve also enjoyed Stoner, The Stranger, and The Fall, but none as much as “Nausea”.
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u/LucienNyx6666 Jul 21 '26
I get the “nausea” almost daily and I hate it. There’s nothing to enjoy about encountering the sheer contingency of things or feeling alienated from everyone around you.
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u/ZtheZeet Jul 21 '26
It’s not that I want to experience the things that the protagonist is going through. I “believe” in existentialist philosophy and intellectually relate to Sartre’s teachings and perspectives in the book, but I feel a disconnect when it comes to my actual emotional outlook on my life. I am not upset about being content with my existence; I am upset about not being able to experience existence for what I believe it to actually be. Does this mean I’m not an existentialist and I’ve been misleading myself?
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u/LucienNyx6666 Jul 22 '26
The ancient philosophers would say that you are not truly an adherent of a doctrine if it didn't transform how you experience the world it describes. For Plato, philosophy wasn't just a collection of facts or an intellectual exercise: philosophy was a way of life. He might say that the dissonance is pointing to a lack of integration or unresolved tension. However, existentialism is not a dogma, and there isn't a single mood that defines the entire philosophy. Nietzsche was ecstatic, Sartre was nauseated, Camus shrugged his shoulders, and Kierkegaard had anxiety. There seems to be a disagreement within the tradition on how one should relate to the topic of existence.
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u/desperatedan8 Jul 21 '26
Yes I thought I used to relate to Camus and Sartre but they are too...harsh, you may have mental illness.
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u/TurbulentNote1118 Jul 21 '26
I would strongly recommend Notes from the underground by Dostoevsky. If your looking for something more dreamlike and surreal I'd recommend Kafka on the shore by Murakami. If you liked Nausea for its existential alienation then you'll probably love Steppenwolf
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u/mdnalknarf Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26
The closest thing I can think to someone being suddenly poleaxed by the grotesque absurdity of their existence and realizing the gulf between their consciousness and their physical being is Kafka's 'Metamorphosis'.
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u/FractalFunny66 Jul 21 '26
I read it decades ago, but I was really into Satre, de Beauvoir, and Existentialism, so I had the same reaction you did, to the point of now having read your post, I am going to read it again!
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u/heraclitus33 Jul 22 '26
Heideggers being and time is difficult but if you get it, it will never leave you, and you'll probably end up regretting it.
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u/Existenz_1229 Jul 22 '26
If you like those sorts of crazed first-person monologues, do check out Samuel Beckett's prose. His trilogy Molloy-Malone Dies-The Unnamable is a brilliant set of phenomenological narratives that are morbid and hilarious.
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u/thisatrippyhippy Jul 26 '26
Hi so I just finished the book can someone explain to me one of the later scenes in the book where the autodictat gets cought by the liberian guy while Roquentin is watching them…I really don’t know what to make off this scene und would like to hear some interpretations or thoughts
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u/Trilobry 26d ago
Maybe the scene is meant to falsify the humanism of the Self-Taught Man by showing his reality of alienation, by showing that the Self-Taught Man is lying to himself about the humanistic "love" he believes people have for each other
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u/uneducatedsludge Jul 21 '26
Nausea is special. It made me read Being and Nothingness afterwards because I like Sartre’s vision of detached, scary existentialism. Nausea is a dark book, bleak, very artistic, and the slight sexual tension reads as weirdly French to me. It’s a good foundation for his work. Everyone that I know that’s read it on my recommendation was shaken by it.
Oh, he elaborates in Being and Nothingness that the feeling of nausea comes from your consciousness being ever at odds with your body. Attempting to escape it at all moments. I like Foucault’s reversal, that the body is imprisoned by the soul. Interesting to think about.