paperback, 210 pages
Published Feb. 19, 2016 by CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
A fascinating existentialist novel, written in the form of a journal, about a historian who moves to a small port in northern France to research a biography he is intending to write. Whilst there his senses become dulled and he becomes increasingly disgusted by his own existence, finding no solace with friends or a woman he begins an affair with.
I too like to talk philosophy when I'm avoiding my emotions.
What if the Buddha, instead of leaving his comfortable life to earnestly seek the truths of thusness and no-self, had instead been bitten by those truths as if by a venomous spider while he was still living his princely life. And what if, instead of then feeling the bliss of awakening and a union with the All, he was instead stricken by a horrific nausea and a panic that the All was penetrating, violating, and dismembering him.
Well, then, the Buddha would be Antoine Roquentin and Buddhism would be the anguished nostalgia for samsara.
Oddly enough, I never finished Nausea. I just got sick of it.
