Rating: 
Summary: The Thorough Smell Of Existentialism
Review: French philosopher, Jean Paul Sartre's early novel Nausea is often cited as the essential book of Existentialism. The book follows Antoine Roquentin who illustrates the subject matter by living it in every minute of his life, on every corner and in every situation. The defeatist philosophy is neither negative nor positive. It simply is. It is the hollow essence of man. Having perceived this, Roquentin can not stand himself, the people around him, the objects revolving them and all related actions or outcomes.
The bleakness extends to Roquentin's object of research. He too, not unsurprisingly, turns out to be an adulterer, a charlatan, unworthy and lacking worth. In short, both the story itself and the story within the story are lambasted in futility in the end.
Wither in such a universe? Nowhere, for the illusion is by definition hollow and but a shell of nothingness.
Rating: 
Summary: Extremely important and a must read, but whiny and weak
Review: It's surprising that a philosopher as well read as Sartre, heavily influenced by the likes of Nietzsche or Breton, should assent to such an ineffectual, non creative view of human existence as the one given in this book. It's likely that even the most joyous and optimistic person knows the feeling that Sartre is trying to convey--the awkwardness and occasional revulsion of concrete, everyday perception as contrasted with our inner life or imagination. There seems to be a curious division between actual reality and the abstractions or ideals we form of it, an unpleasant divide between the material and the mental. Of course, we should give all due respect to Sartre for having the rare ability to articulate this very vague feeling that a less talented artist or thinker would undoubtedly fail to depict as vividly as he does, but at the same time anyone deeply interested in philosophy (particularly the existentialist movement) can't help but feel disappointment at a book that seems at times like a pointless exercise in useless morbidity and weakness. I'm puzzled that some call this book 'visionary', when in fact the truth is that it's the opposite of visionary or imaginative, that is, deliberately impoverished and bleak. I personally have no doubt that Nietzsche or Sartre's others predecessors would feel nothing but contempt and hatred for this novel. You come away wondering why Sartre wrote it at all, since it is so negative and despairing that if the author actually felt the way Roquentin did, the only thing left for him to do would be to kill himself. At least Camus, who I find tame, boring and depressing, had the strength to affirm life even while acknowledging it's possible meaninglessness and ultimate futility. It is true that there is a curious and unsettling divorce of the human mind from the material reality it inhabits, but I hardly think it follows from this that life is wholly in vain or 'nauseating'. Admitting the very existence of this feeling does indeed take a great deal of philosophical courage and intellectual integrity (given it's possible consequences), but drawing the conclusions from it that Sartre supposedly did is simply mistaken. Read it just for the experience, but try to recognize how subjective and relative Sartre's conclusions are.
Rating: 
Summary: Just too boring
Review: It is difficult to call this a novel as the plot seems non-existent. I must confess I was too bored after 50 pages or so to finish the book. It does present important philosophical ideas but you might be better off either reading the philosophy of existentialism or reading novels by authors like Camus or Kafka.
Rating:
Summary: Sartre Succeeds
Review: If you like warm, fuzzy literature, this story isn't for you. If you prefer to read fiction that agrees with what you already think, or helps you sleep at night, this story isn't for you. However, if you enjoy engaging, incredibly well-written, (and superbly translated), literature, you will enjoy this book. "Nausea", like "Woman in the Dunes" by Kobo Abe, is not an easy or comfortable story to plow through, but it is a fascinating and superb story. Also, don't pass this book if you are intimidated by all the high falutin' philosophy talk; enjoy this book as the remarkable, if disturbing story, that it is. Excellent reading.
Rating:
Summary: the dread of living
Review: The whole plot is but a motivation of making us understand author's theory of existence devoid of essence. That existence is devoid of essence is clear. Even more, existence IS only when seen from an inward perspective (through an existent). Outside of it, existence is just a mass of attributes (SOME OF WHICH WE, THE LIVING, AGGREGATE AS "BEING"). The driving force behind any human's actions, just among any OTHER animal, is his instinct of self-preservation. Characters other than Roquentin skillfully represent the mirrored variations of ONE archaic being who lives in complete stupor, operating on a multitude of automatisms, instincts and archetipes. This is man: a product and bystander of many illusions, a BEING conditioned through its very nature. To say EVEN ABOUT the one who knows this that by such he TRANSCENDS such order would be as idiotic as claiming a rebelious fish left his seas and built a shelter on mainland...How man reacts when confronted with such absolute inescapable realities. Can the instinct of self-preservation withstand such vicious assault which threatenes to destroy the beautiful heartfelt love for the self? It can, in theory: since being conditiones thinking and not the viceversa. However, in practice, it does BADLY, since the very basis upon which automatisms are built gets downgraded towards a pitiful state, when you KNOW you are nothing more than disposable meat mass...
Rating:
Summary: Great Work
Review: I loved this work when I read it, but I grow to love it more and more each day. I believe that Sartre is right in many of his points in this work, especially the idea of the nausea, which I have experienced first hand. If you are looking for someplace to start with Sartre, this is the place.
Rating:
Summary: awful book, awful people, silly message
Review: Sartre built a career as a misanthropic intellectual. His characters (and his analyses) brim with the most total alienation imaginable, with the strong dose of narcissism that comes along with slef-declared geniuses. The protagonist of this novel is a bored scholar, researching an ancestor. He is incapable of love and in the grips of a depression and loathing that fill him with waves of nausea. That is it in this novel! There is meaning in nothing. The only thing I felt reading about these sick people was nausea - and boredom. In writing a negative review of such a famous novel, I know there will be lots who disagree, but I am sick of novels like this that are held up by a national cultural establishment as "great," i.e. enhancing their international image, rather than works that should be read more openly and naively. You can tell the difference in so many media: look at Michelangelo and you immediately feel his genius, whereas if you fail to perceive the artistic "value" of many contemporary works, you are condemned as lacking the finesse and brains to see what you are told to see. Not recommended. This is the ideal novel for a high school student to read ostentatiously, exhibiting some kind of "depth."
Rating: 
Summary: Solitude drives you crazy.
Review: I doubt that's what Sartre intended as the moral of his book, but that's what I got out of it. Anyone would go crazy after living without meaningful relationships for 4 years. People who are totally alone don't have a clearer conception of the world than other people - they have a distorted understanding. Objects are grotesque and absurd when they exist in isolation ; they become meaningful through relationships with other objects.
Rating:
Summary: Man Without A Mission
Review: Those who look carefully at the book's cover will notice that the gentleman's hand, as if feeling his heartbeat, makes up the lips of the larger portrait image of himself, superimposed on the former, smaller self. Was this an aesthetic decision on the part of the publishers? Or does it serve to implicate the essence of the novel- the fractured self? The novel is more than just about existentialism (the idea that asserts existence over essence, commonly attributed to the lack of God and Intrinsic Meaning), it is about a man's ambivalence with trying to be an emotional human while contemplating said belief. Nausea may be the companion novel to Camus' more lyrical and popular, "The Stranger". They are both first person accounts of men who wander around all day with nothing to do or believe. All they are left with are their thoughts, and the relentless drone of their own restless consciousness. However, the narrator in Nausea is a deeper thinker. He goes to the library and talks with 'the learned man', he contemplates the black bark of a tree and awakens to 'nothingness', he is more self-aware, more pensive, less ironic than Camus' hero, who truly doesn't care about anything. Before reader's dismiss such men as self-absorbed philistines, it is important to understand the context of such writings: Europe, mostly France, between or directly after the two World Wars. It was time of moral breakdown and relativity, when humans had proven to eachother that perhaps there wasn't a God. Sartre's solution was sobering and brave: Mankind's existence without essence, pure and empty. Follow our narrator, one entry at a time, one endless walk at a time, as he tries to make the most of what he has: nothing.
Rating:
Summary: Grab Being and Nothingness instead
Review: Seriously. Get Being and Nothingness instead of this. It's not bad, but Jean-Paul has better. Read the philosophy, pick up No Exit, grab yourself a beret, a Gitane, and kick back. This book is worth the read, but its not Sartre at his top form.
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