Jean Paul Sartre
I think I was 13 or so when I found myself in a rented beach-house with my then-younger mother and almost total lack of reading on a hot summer vacation. The village library offered nothing more than the complete works of Lenin, Marx and some Dimitrov, as it was in still communist Bulgaria.
In a desperate need to fill my nerdish brains with any written information, instead of rolling in the dust under the blazing sun, I found that my intellectual mother has brought with her a recently published, for the first time in Russian, Nausea. Needless to say, Sartre is not the best reading for the underaged. But as he was a newcomer to our shores, nobody was aware of it. So I plunged into the existential hell accompanied by the chicken cackle and cicadas heard through the window.
Upon reading the 50th page I felt quite bad. By the page 70 I was definately ill. Nauseate, to be precise. When it was obvious, that I'll vomit in a minute, I ran to the shack pretending to be a closet (definately not a water-closet), and threw up. While doing so I understood that the enemy (Sartre, possibly) attacked from behind as well, as the specific feeling of a diarrhea was growing. Cursing the French I had to turn around, and continue emptying my intestines. And turning again. And again.
I spent three days in bed, taking rounds in the shaky toilet. Haven't read Sartre since. Don't think ever will. No need. I know him by my err.. stomach.
(Restoration Dept., Fri 8 Jan 2010, 21:15, Reply)