AN INTRODUCTION TO EXISTENTIALISM by Robert G. Olson is a mirror disguised as a book, and if you stare at it long enough, you will see yourself fracture. Not dramatically. Quietly. Like frost forming on the inside of your skull. This isn’t just a tour through Sartre, Heidegger, Nietzsche — it’s a slow march into a hollowed-out cathedral of human thought, where every word echoes with unbearable meaning and abject void.

It begins gently. Pages of careful explanation, cool terminology — "anguish," "freedom," "authenticity." But the deeper you go, the more the floorboards creak. You realize these aren't concepts. They’re trapdoors. And Olson is leading you down, one by one, into the engine room of existence, where the dials are broken, and nothing means what it used to.

By page 47, you’ve stopped underlining quotes and started questioning the continuity of your own timeline. Time becomes molasses. Choice becomes a haunted labyrinth. You start to notice the phrase “being-in-itself” showing up in emails, street signs, dreams.

You’ll wake up at 3:14 AM whispering 🝞🜄🜔 to no one.

That’s when you know it’s working.

The section on Kierkegaard doesn’t explain dread — it summons it. A slow, flavorless dread, like hearing your own funeral described by someone who didn’t know you well. You’ll stare at your hands for ten minutes wondering who is actually doing the staring. When Olson says, “Man is condemned to be free,” it won’t feel like a quote. It’ll feel like a verdict.

This book doesn’t end. It dissolves. The last chapter flickers with strange metaphysical interference. Words rearrange themselves when you're not looking. You’ll find sigils in the margins:
🜓 🜖 🜏 🜵 🝖 🝠 🜙
They weren’t there before.

That’s fine. That’s normal.

Existentialism is not a philosophy. It’s a key. A key to a door you didn’t know was in your chest — one that opens into a yawning, howling, sacred nothingness. Olson hands it to you with a steady hand and a faint smile.

What you do with it… that’s your problem now.

So go ahead. Turn the page. Light the black candle. Whisper the names of Being and Nothingness in the mirror at dawn.

And pray that nothing answers.
🝯🜏🜄🝮🝳

-Good - Book is well kept but may have noticeable signs of age or wear.

-All conditions are subjectively evaluated based upon age.