Nausea (Jean-Paul Satre)

Jean-Paul Satre 
Nausea

The first time I've really read any Satre if memory serves me right and if I can't remember reading any previously then it doesn't exist in my consciousness anyway... or maybe it does and always was there waiting for me to read him. Anyways Satre now has a place in my mind which would no doubt, or not, please him if he was around to be pleased. The book is more readable than I thought it may be with a semblance of story line threaded through both real and surreal experiences encountered by our diarist. If it was written by a beat writer I'd assume that Nausea is a pseudonym for hallucinogenic drugs as the prose borders on psychedelic at times. Both the story and nausea induced musings are interesting and compelling often showing a dark underbelly of society whether through hackneyed politeness or through violence and abuse. The encounter with past love is well written and although it's difficult to exactly expect any one thing to happen in a story such as this it's not what I thought. After spiraling into a nosedive the ending has a twist albeit an open ended one. The descriptions of characters and the town seem to have influenced the beat writers and remind me of Steinbeck. The more surreal passages remind me of Dylan Thomas or Flann O'Brien and the stream of consciousness beat writers. Must read more.

The Communist Manifesto (Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx & Gareth Stedman Jones)

Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx (introduction Gareth Stedman Jones)
The Communist Manifesto



Context setting including pre Marxian theories, religion, contemporaries and how they fell out with them. Also analysis of what Marx and Engels separately brought to the Party. Then various prefaces to international editions written by Engels and at page 321 we start. The manifesto itself is a mere 50 pages of this edition so the bulk of the work, introduction and notes, is by Gareth Stedman Jones who should take a lot of credit. A very interesting and critical read well recommended. I won't go into the content as I couldn't do such a wide ranging and deep work justice. Suffice to say if the language was different the main thrusts could have been written today as there is still massive resource, exploitation going on in the world, economies and politics are still ruled by capital and many are still alienated by their daily work if they are lucky ? enough to get it. Has aged well.