Nausea

by Jean-Paul Sartre

I think of the man out there who wrote this tune, one day in July, in the black heat of his room. I try to think of him through the melody, through the white, acidulated sounds of the saxophone. He made it. He had troubles, everything didn’t work out for him the way it should have: bills to pay—and then there surely must have been a woman somewhere who wasn’t thinking about him the way he would have liked her to—and then there was this terrible heat wave which turned men into pools of melting fat. There is nothing pretty or glorious in all that. But when I hear the sound and I think that that man made it, I find this suffering and sweat . . . moving. He was lucky. He couldn’t have realized it. He must have thought: with a little luck, this thing will bring in fifty dollars. Well, this is the first time in years that a man has seemed moving to me.