Brent holds a Ph.D. in American culture from the University of Michigan. She works as a freelance writer and editor. In the following essay, Brent discusses the theme of storytelling in Sartre's novel.

At the very end of Nausea, Roquentin comes to the conclusion that he wants to write a novel and that this process will serve as a solution to the problem of existence that he has been grappling with. During the course of Nausea, Roquentin's thinking about the concepts of adventure, heroes, and storytelling gradually develop to the point at which he comes to conceive of the process of writing a novel as an adventure and the role of novel-writer as that of a hero.

During the many hours Roquentin spends sitting in cafés and overhearing the conversations of the people around him, he is aware of people's tendency to tell one...