NAUSEA

Sartre's first novel, published originally in France in 1938, this is primarily of interest in its enunciation of the concept of existentialism which his later novels are to enact-rather than articulate. This, in the diary of Antoine Roquentin, presumably engaged in some rather remote research on an 18th century figure, records Roquentin's increasingly inward investigation of his relationship to the world, precipitated by the spells of nausea ("the hatred, the disgust of existing") which overtake him. As the days pass, monotonously, morosely, his understanding of his existence intensifies, extends to the realization that "Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance" and he is left with his new freedom, having broken off all contacts with his previous life, his desire to write a book, the woman he had once loved...There is certainly none of the external drama of Sartre's later works here; there is also the same preoccupation with the physically distasteful; but the book holds an interest- for his followers- in its formulation of the theory for which he has become famous.