Miss Lonelyhearts and the Fate of Queer Sentiment

This paper argues that sentimentality and queer desire are interrelated notions in Nathanael West’s 1933 novel Miss Lonelyhearts. The novel’s protagonist, Miss Lonelyhearts, is torn between his craving wish to be a savior of the suffering crowd and the ironical realization that such humanity is unattainable in modernizing America. His attempts to build meaningful connections with others consistently fail, as every form of communication—whether through language or physical touch—proves ineffective. In this world of emotional wasteland, there is but a moment of sincere physical contact between two male characters. Despite the scene’s warm sentimentality, West presents ambiguity concerning the meaning behind the contact. Focusing on the reader’s estrangement from the meaning, I maintain that emotional ambiguity is related to queer sexuality of the characters. Regarding sentimentality and queer desire as the others of literary modernism and heterosexism in the Thirties respectively, I contend that Miss Lonelyhearts is the novel that despairingly probes the possibility of the existence of both sentiment and queerness in the world of modernism and homophobia.