Roquentin is a crisis that in retrospect we will call “existential.” He is having a crisis of meaning – why am I here, what point is there in doing anything – but also something much stronger, a crisis of existence, actual doubts that he exists. That anything exists.
These are bedrock philosophical issues. It is a little odd to see the latter affect an adult so strongly. Most of us reconcile ourselves to the existence of either the world, our self, or both, at an early age. Haven’t we? There is a solipsistic aspect to existentialism, but I should beware of my own solipsism.
Nausea (1938) is in the form of Roquentin’s journal, so I do not see the crisis exactly, but Roquentin’s retrospective expression of his crisis. The meaning of this novel really shifts depending on how reliable I think the journal is. Several of the longest scenes look suspiciously like scenes from novels, with lots of dialogue and minute action and gestures. Lines are said adverbily, shoulders are shrugged. I did not need the verb “to shrug” for getting by in France, for conversation, but boy do I need it for literature.
No surprise when the narrator declares, at the end of his journal and Sartre’s novel, that he will himself start work on a novel, presumably a refracted version of the one I just read. Well, no, I was surprised, because Proust had ended his big series of novels this way only eleven years earlier and I was amazed that Sartre so blatantly copied him. Ten years is the statute of limitations on endings, I guess?
I point anyone interested to the scene where the narrator and an acquaintance spend two pages ordering lunch in a café. They look at the menu; they choose appetizers; they choose a main course; they choose wine.
Je parcours le liste des viandes. Le boeuf en daube me tenterait. Mais je sais d’avance que j’aurai du poulet chasseur, c’est la seule viande supplémentée. (p. 147, Gallimard edition)
I looked through the list of meat dishes. The boeuf en daube tempted me. But I already knew that I would have the hunter’s chicken, the only dish with an extra charge. (my translation)
I identified closely with this scene. I have experienced it many times. How tedious to read!
But Roquentin’s crisis is caused by an uneasy relationship with things, so it is nice to see him in a scene with a person, someone he knows from the library where he is researching a book, a history. It helps him get his nausea, his existential queasiness, under control.
A few pages earlier, Roquentin had tamped his despair by a careful study of his own hand, which is part of his self yet exists outside of his self. He moves from his hand to words – a big jump! – to thoughts. Perhaps this steadies him during lunch. “[S]i j’existe, c’est parce que j’ai horreur d’exister” (140). “If I exist, it is because I have a horror of existing.” It is “hate,” “the disgust of existing,” that convinces him he exists.
How much is Nausea a philosophical novel and how much is it a psychological novel? Is there a meaningful distinction? I don’t know. With existentialism, maybe there is little difference. The text gives a lot of room, as far as I can tell.
Tomorrow I’ll rummage through some of my favorite things in the novel, whatever it might mean.
I read this for the first tine s couple of years ago. I tend to like existentialist musings. I think that one can argue thaf existentialsm, when it involves emotions, is psychological.
ReplyDeleteI did not know about the ending mirroring Proust.
My taste is the other way. Less musings, please! More form, more art. So I turn this into art, which is Kermode's argument.
ReplyDeleteAnd thus it has characters, and becomes a work of psychology, if I choose to read it that way, or if I do not know another way.
Sartre may be parodying Proust. Deflating him. Proust's character needs to write a novel to understand an experience of great insight and meaning; Sartre's character needs a way to kill time.
That café lunch scene sounds hilarious in an only-in-France way.
ReplyDeleteDuring lunch, the characters argue about socialism and humanism. It is very, very French.
ReplyDeleteThere is another extremely French scene that I will write about today, I think. Sunday in France.
No surprise when the narrator declares, at the end of his journal and Sartre’s novel, that he will himself start work on a novel, presumably a refracted version of the one I just read. Well, no, I was surprised, because Proust had ended his big series of novels this way only eleven years earlier and I was amazed that Sartre so blatantly copied him. Ten years is the statute of limitations on endings, I guess?
ReplyDeleteGide's The Counterfeiters (Les Faux-monnayeurs, 1925) also needs to be part of this conversation; I guess it isn't much read these days (but then, is Nausea?), but it was huge in the 1920s and '30s (it was, for instance, a major influence on Nabokov's The Gift) and I'm sure it would have been much on Sartre's mind. It too (for those who haven't read it, and it's very much worth reading) is a book about a book becoming a book.
It is a little odd to see the latter affect an adult so strongly. Most of us reconcile ourselves to the existence of either the world, our self, or both, at an early age.
Specifically, it's a form of adolescent angst. The ideal progression is from childhood (happy acceptance of the world around us; need for stories that affirm the values of that world) to adolescence (sudden realization that the world is flawed, that people lie and cheat, along with a desire to strike out in all directions and try dérèglement de tous les sens; need for stories that feed our cynicism) to adulthood (acceptance of the messy world we live in and tolerance of people unlike us, even if they make us nervous/unhappy; need for stories told in interesting ways that give us new perspectives on people and life). Many people never become adults. Some are stuck in childhood, ever-trusting and satisfied with a simplistic view of life; many more are stuck in adolescence, with favorite authors like (depending on generation and mindset) Salinger, Hesse, Vonnegut, and David Foster Wallace. And, back in the day, Sartre. Which is not to say that Sartre was himself an adolescent writer -- heaven forfend! -- but that existential angst is very appealing to adolescents.
Yes, the Gide book is quite good, and you see echoes of it in a number of other works. It also has a party scene featuring Alfred Jarry.
ReplyDeleteYes, adolescent. The character does not seem to adolescent early on in the novel, but his adolescence emerges.
ReplyDeleteMy experience with American magazine writing is that Gide has become, in English, the author of The Immoralist. In France, he is quite a bit bigger than that.
It is quite interesting to hear about Les Faux-monnayeurs. Unfortunately it looks like it is on the long side. Well, I will work my way up to it someday.