all right welcome back everyone to another episode of me reading a book in
every sub-genre of every genre if this is your first time here check out this
playlist it has all my previous book discussions you might be interested in
some of them you might have read some of them what I want to talk about today is
this thing I'm dealing with so the library is closed and that has been my
main source of materials for this whole reading a book in every sub-genre of
every genre project well now that's closed it's a good time to check out
Project Gutenberg which is this free site that has access to all literature
that are currently in the public domain and there are a lot of them so I just
had to switch up my plan a little bit and hopefully at some point the library
will come back that being the case what genre am I gonna be reading now I
decided to check out the philosophy genre because this has been topics that
I've been very interested in for a long time and never really had the
opportunity to really dive into it never took a philosophy course but I am really
interested in that stuff so the genre is philosophy the sub-genre this time is
existentialism at the book representing that is nausea by jean-paul Sartre just
so you guys know I have a Kindle Fire I don't like it and I'm not actually able
to connect it to my macbook air anymore so I've been doing all my reading from
my laptop which is not ideal so this thing I'm holding right here this is
just a prop so if there's one thing you know about existentialism it's probably
the term existential crisis which refers to that feeling again when you don't
know why you're going to work you don't know why you're going to school you
don't even know why this food is in front of you and what is the meaning of
life that is an existential crisis but existentialism is actually a really
powerful teaching that allows the individual to make their own choice to
allow them to determine how they want to live and what their purpose is it's not
about saying life is without purpose it's saying life is the purpose you make
it cetera has this phrase existence proceeds
essence an essence meaning that something is created for a reason like
this Kindle this shitty Kindle is created for the purpose of me reading a
book but not able to upload books aside from Amazon onto it so that is this
thing's purpose however as humans our purpose isn't it's not clear therefore
our existence precedes our purpose and therefore as we start living we need to
create our own purpose so nausea is such was first novel and
it's fiction and it's written as a journal from the point of view of the
main character antoine role quentin who is this just this dude who's wandering
around he's trying to work on a project but he's losing interest in it he's
waiting for a visit from his ex and that's kind of what he's thinking about
sometimes he's thinking about his work most of the time he's just aimlessly
wandering from bars to cafes to museums at times and having these kind of
philosophical conversations with different individuals in the city now I
just want to add this really quickly ah you should not use anything I say in
this video as a steady note alright this is just a discussion this is just how I
feel about the story I'm reading I'm about halfway through right now and
usually how I do it is I'll read to the halfway point I'll share my thoughts
with you and then at the end of the book I'll come back and I'll revisit some of
the points I made or if I have a new profound insight to share I'll share
those as well so at the halfway point of this book I have to ask this question
what is a real problem is an existential crisis a real crisis I mean we're living
through a crisis right now you know like a global crisis like the economy is down
people are getting say how is that compared to an existential crisis where
we ask ourselves what is points of even staying alive and a lot
of people are like this right during this time they're still trying to live
their normal life they're refusing to let go what is their normal life and we
have to say no you can't do that anymore things have changed and then they go
what's the point of living then and I feel like bad is the type of existential
crisis we're now living through it's like what what is the point of all this
and we have to readjust all the plans that we made for ourselves and
existentialism is about oh you're being allowed to make your own decisions but
here we are not being able to make them anymore so that's kind of scary that's
kind of the existential crisis I'm thinking about right now my own personal
existential crisis and stuff stuff and that is kind of the problem that Anton
ro Quintin is having as well because he's working on this historical project
where he stole these documents from I believe the Russian government or
something and he's gonna write about this figure this historical figure and
he's working on he's working on it every morning and he's losing interest in it
he kind of felt that by writing history he could sort of capture something but
what is actually happening is by writing history his own life becomes history as
well and is making him feel not great and whenever he has these existential
crisis type of moments he feels this nausea I think we can all relate to
having to work on something that we're losing a lot of interests a lot of
passion for and we're just wondering to ourselves what is the point of doing
this what is the point of wasting my days doing this there's another part of
it where he talks about things fitting together and he's sitting at a cafe this
main character and he's listening to music it's jazz record and suddenly he
felt like oh the music fits with that there's another conversation where he
talks to someone about adventures and how life is all about having these
adventures and what does that even mean I don't know if he said it or not but
the way I took it was that life is about finding these things that fit together
like a jazz song at a cafe you being there in a cafe at the right time for
that song to start playing and that becomes a worthwhile moment to live this
is not a plot heavy story it's literally it's just this dude walking around
wandering around there are a lot of interesting conversations that happen a
lot of also not interesting conversation kind of mundane conversations I felt
like this was a nice book to just kind of mellow things out not have to get my
heart racing in any way what I'm interested in finding out at the very
end I hope it happens at the very end I hope it happens at some point in the
book and doesn't just leave me hanging is he's playing to the main character
Antoine is planning to meet up with his ex at some point Annie
and he's having all these feelings about it he's also wondering what is he gonna
do when he finally meets her after living through everything that he's been
going through I'm interested to see how something like this wraps up I will
check back in with you about this once I finished reading the whole novel and
yeah I'll let you know my my final thoughts on nausea by jean-paul Sartre
probably right now hey welcome back and I just finished reading nausea by John
Paul Sartre and here here are my thoughts or someone talked about a
couple themes that I picked up on these are kind of existential lessons that I
think might be useful if you care to hear them well I'm gonna tell to you
anyways the first one is about absurdity things
that are absurd and how so often in life we try to make sense of things that
absurd they're meaningless at least there's no clear answer to them and I
think the part in the book I'm trying to remember properly I think he's like
looking at a tree or something and you at the roots and how the grades grow and
just all the different shapes it makes and like why why are they why are they
these shapes why are there so many of them why are they here and all very
absurd I mean you can't try to you know use scientific logic to make sense of it
and that is so much of life that we look at something and it's human nature to
try to make sense of things and sometimes it's better if we just let
things be it and that's kind of our life - the way if we think of ourselves like
a tree and how we row and all the different roots and limbs that we get
along the way all the experiences and trauma that happens in our life and we
try to make sense of it but it's all it's all absurd the next lesson is about
nothingness and the idea of nothingness and what nothingness really means there
is nothing that is nothing because everything is kind of in your brain
where you're thinking about it when you are thinking of nothingness you are
thinking of something you're thinking of this nothingness it's this idea in your
head it's as tangible as any other idea that you have but let's let's move on to
the plot of the story like how does it wrap up how does nausea wrap a majority
of the second half is about the main character as the protagonist Antoine he
meets up with his former lover Annie and it's kind of an awkward exchange on
seeing Annie he sees that she's changed she's up she's getting some way but
overall Annie is kind of unpleasant - she reminds him of all the stuff he's
done wrong to her she's also remember things differently from how he's
remembering it she's talking about events that he has no recollection of
she would go on to describe Antoine as a milestone on the road and that he's
useful for anybody who needs him I don't know if that's like an insult or a
compliment I think it's somewhere in between
see and he didn't really help him with his happiness at all but it helped him
realize what he knows needs to do he needs to move on with his life he can't
keep thinking about her because sure in reality she has stopped thinking
about him and even if she is thinking about him she's thinking about details
that he doesn't remember so they're essentially different people from when
they were once together so he decides to go back to Bull Ville pack up his things
and leave and start a new chapter in his life and while he's there saying goodbye
to town he witnessed one of his old acquaintances the self-taught man get
assaulted and he just feels so bad for him he now knows that the trauma of that
assault is gonna stay with him forever much like the trauma of a knee is gonna
stay with him forever so the book ends with Antoine in the cafe listening to
his favorite jazz record and thinking about the composer that wrote was
sitting there he kind of yearns to be this composer to this to be this person
who has created something that can make him feel such emotions and it really
does get rid of that nauseous feeling that he has been carrying around with
him this whole time in the end he decides you know what I should keep
writing I should become a writer that there's value and that doesn't know who
he'll affect in the world but having that realization inspires him to in a
way continue existing this book is certainly not a page-turner I think
there is certainly a time and a place for a book like this and for me it was
in the morning with a cup of coffee just kind of empty my mind before I started
my day it was a it was very freeing and I don't usually read that much in the
morning but I felt like I needed that energy to actually get through this
piece seeing I enjoyed about this book the most which was not what Sora was
intending for sure was that it was just nice to read about this character being
so aimless and he's kind of wandering around and he's just kind of struggling
through but he's also going to cafes he's doing different things going to the
library and it was really just these little things that I miss a lot in our
current life so it was a nice escape that way - that's nausea by John Paul
Sartre this is me I'm Elliot I am reading a book in every sub-genre of
area genre I'm reading different philosophy books but I'm trying to read
fiction philosophy books because I think there's some something special about
that and so that's where I am right now I don't even know if these different
philosophies can even be considered genres I actually don't really but
that's what I'm doing right now and no one no one can stop me you could leave a
angry comment I suppose on what you think is Jean Rey is that's like a very
contentious thing actually no one's really sure what John was on but does
this is how I'm categorizing it so if you're interested in this mess I made
please follow along subscribe and check out these videos right here I'll see you
guys in the next one bye