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 : Nausea

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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 843.914
EAN: 9780811217002
ISBN: 0811217000
Label: New Directions
Manufacturer: New Directions
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 192
Publication Date: May 23, 2007
Publisher: New Directions
Studio: New Directions




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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
The classic Existentialist novel, with a newintroduction by renowned poet, translator, and critic Richard Howard.

Winner of the 1964 Nobel Prize for Literature, Jean-Paul Sartre, French philosopher, critic, novelist, and dramatist, holds a position of singular eminence in the world of letters. Among readers and critics familiar with the whole of Sartre's work, it is generally recognized that his earliest novel, La Nausée (first published in 1938), is his finest and most significant. It is unquestionably a key novel of the twentieth century and a landmark in Existentialist fiction.

Nausea is the story of Antoine Roquentin, a French writer who is horrified at his own existence. In impressionistic, diary form he ruthlessly catalogues his every feeling and sensation. His thoughts culminate in a pervasive, overpowering feeling of nausea which "spreads at the bottom of the viscous puddle, at the bottom of our time—the time of purple suspenders and broken chair seats; it is made of wide, soft instants, spreading at the edge, like an oil stain." Roquentin's efforts to come to terms with life, his philosophical and psychological struggles, give Sartre the opportunity to dramatize the tenets of his Existentialist creed.



Customer Reviews
Average Rating:  out of 5 stars

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - The poetry of obsessive uselessness
Sartre's "Nausea" is a gripping, twitchy little novella confirming the ways one person of unpleasant station can make them self sick , nervous, an odious presence by lingering long on the ambivalent shrug .No one else could write a better tale of an intensely self-aware intellectual whose physical discomforts translate into a changed worldview. Not a lot of laughs, but Sartre does insert his descriptions of bad faith of an intellect aware of his stagnation but whose dread saps strength, and will ... Read More



Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - Amazing
Nausea is absolutely amazing. This is the book that started everything for me. Education and the pursuit of knowledge became priorities in my life after reading this book, thanks to Sartre. Existentialism may be "dead" to some people, but to the high school or early college student who is disenchanted with the world around them, this is the perfect book to get those intellectual juices flowing. The "self-learned man" who sits at the library reading in alphabetical order everything that he can inspired ... Read More



Rating: 3 out of 5 stars - * ".....I think I don't want to think...it would be much better if I could only stop thinking....".
Even though I'm intrigued by existentialism, I am still struggling to understand what Sartre is trying to tell us in Nausea. The main character, because he finds other humans boring, petty, phony...., he makes a choice to stand away from the rest of humanity. He is a critical observer, the constant cynic. So much easier to stand at a distance and criticize to feel the Nausea that is humanity. The nausea is only one side of the coin, because not all in life is despicable, crass and disgusting, He has ... Read More



Rating: 4 out of 5 stars - thought provoking vignettes.
This is the one, only, and very likely last text from Sartre that I will ever read, but it is also one of the very few works of fiction that I'd consider worth reading more than once. It is great. The anti-Vonnegut. I can only imagine how much better it is in the original French. Highly recommended. (Albert Camus' review is useful & more critical; see that for a balanced but more heavy handed substantial commentary.)



Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - brilliant, but you must be in the right state of mind
You have to be in a certain state of mind to read this- anyone who says it's stupid or not a great work or is put off by how he speaks of himself and the city he's in, needs to not read it, but immerse themselves in it, however if one would do that then chances are he'd lose everything else in life, because he cannot control it.

This is one of the best books i've ever read, it's simply brilliant, but only if you understand the feelings he's having.







 






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