Experienced professionals? They have dragged out their life in stupor and semi-sleep, they have married hastily, out of impatience, they have made children at random. They have met other men in cafés, at weddings and funerals. Sometimes, caught in the tide, they have struggled against it without understanding what was happening to them. All that has happened around them has eluded them; long, obscure shapes, events from afar, brushed by them rapidly and when they turned to look all had vanished. And then, around forty, they christen their small obstinacies and a few proverbs with the name of experience, they begin to simulate slot machines: put a coin in the left hand slot and you get tales wrapped in silver paper, put a coin in the slot on the right and you get precious bits of advice that stick to your teeth like caramels.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Nausea (New Directions Paperbook) (Kindle Locations 1374-1380). New Directions. Kindle Edition.
Christian Bennett
#people who I wish were still around today
Juan Edwards
As a lawfag who has been struggling to continue writing after my youth, this fucking hurts. A lot.
Tyler Anderson
That is some nice moral posturing from a misanthropic manlet who sold out his soul for the Soviet Union.
Jason Hernandez
>this rant
Literally an inferior copycat of Céline's Voyage, just without the slang and funky punctuation.
Anthony Foster
>There are also amateurs. These are secretaries, office workers, shopkeepers, people who listen to others in cafés: around forty they feel swollen, with an experience they can’t get rid of. Luckily they’ve made children on whom they can pass it off. They would like to make us believe that their past is not lost, that their memories are condensed, gently transformed into Wisdom. Convenient past! Past handed out of a pocket! little gilt books full of fine sayings. “Believe me, I’m telling you from experience, all I know I’ve learned from life.” Has life taken charge of their thoughts? They explain the new by the old—and the old they explain by the older still, like those historians who turn a Lenin into a Russian Robespierre, and a Robespierre into a French Cromwell: when all is said and done, they have never understood anything at all. . . . You can imagine a morose idleness behind their importance: they see the long parade of pretences, they yawn, they think there’s nothing new under the sun.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Nausea (New Directions Paperbook) (Kindle Locations 1388-1396). New Directions. Kindle Edition.
Leo Perez
Here's what a private letter by Céline from 1920 said about the same theme (wisdom and the new things to do in life). Admire the strength compared to Sartre:
>N'hésite surtout pas devant la difficulté apparente. Crache devant, dessus, dessous tous les gens qui te diront que c'est folie. On arrive à ce qu'on veut, et les choses les plus difficiles d'apparence sont protégées surtout par sa propre peur et la lâcheté bruyante des arguments dits de la sagesse. La destinée est une putain qui se tait quand on l'enfile. Mais pour cela il faut bander, et les vieux voudraient bien encore, mais la Pondération les tue.
Nicholas Wilson
i like sartre. i like celine even more. i still like sartre
Christopher Garcia
The best of Sartre is The Wall (IMO). Not too long-winded, not trying too hard either, and memorable overall.
Owen Diaz
>La destinée est une putain qui se tait quand on l'enfile. holy shit!
