"The Politics of Lonely" by Lee Arden
September 10, 2026
Today is launch day for a book I'm really excited to tell you about. The book was written by Lee Arden, a person I've gotten to know over the last several years via online communities, and had the great fortune to meet in 3D, offline too! We've worked on some cool projects together and I've bought a whole heck of a lot of zines and books from Lee's small press publisher/distributor, Sheer Spite.
This post, just like anything else you can find on my website, isn't sponsored in any way. The only kickbacks I get if you buy, read, or encourage your library to get Sheer Spite is the joy at seeing a friend succeed, and the joy of maybe getting to chat with you about what you thought about the book after you read it! But you know what? Those are pretty great kickbacks, actually, because supporting your friends is pretty great.
If you are reading my blog, you and I probably have some stuff in common, so I bet you already agree that supporting your friends is awesome! Maybe you feel really great about your friendship relations, or maybe you wish they were somehow different- stronger, more committed, a different frequency of hang-outs, perhaps. You've probably liked some social media posts over the years about how college is great because maybe it's the only time a whole lot of white middle class Americans get to live in a walkable community with all their friends, and have lots of leisure time. Maybe you've been feeling lonely, or wondering about why you feel so disconnected. Maybe you've been thinking of reading Bowling Alone for years, like me, but never have. (It's 544 pages! That's a lot.)
If any of that applies to you, I have a feeling a lot of what Lee has to say about friendship might resonate with you, too. Lee's writing from the perspective of a nearly-40 queer person with no kids and no long-term partnered romantic relationship. Lee has long been totally bought in on the importance of friendship as an important life value, and has been thinking about, writing about, and trying to practice radical friendship for years. And yet! It hasn't always felt, for Lee, like friendship was living up to its radical potential. The chosen family ideal that so many queer people talk about or want: it didn't always feel great in practice, or even feel like it really existed.
If you're like me, or like Lee, you've probably read a bunch of stuff over the years trying to explain why that might be the case. (but not Bowling Alone, let's be honest, even though it's foundational in the genre). And some of those things you've read probably sounded right, though a lot of them were more focused on a cis/straight/two-point-two-kids-with-two-car-garage assumed audience and lonely-person than represents you or many of the people in your friendship circles.
The Politics of Lonely picks up where everything you've read before about friendship leaves off and goes a little bit deeper, or a little higher level. Or both! It looks at the systemic reasons it can be hard to show up for our friends even when we really, really want to.
One way of writing this book might be to say it's all systemic, and the individual choices we (or our friends) make don't matter, or there's nothing we can do. Another way might be to focus on the individual only: pull your friendships up by your bootstraps, and abandon those who may have ever let you down. What I love about The Politics of Lonely is how capably it avoids either extreme. The systemic critique it builds of capitalism and neoliberalism's effects on our personal relationships are some of the sharpest and strongest I've seen in media around the "loneliness epidemic" or "why is it so hard to make and keep friends as an adult". And yet, that's no scapegoat: we see through the personal anecdotes that Lee has wrestled with how to show up better as a friend anyways, and what conditions need to change and we could change to make friendship more possible for all of us.
The book didn't make me feel sad about capitalism and then throw up my hands to go enjoy some private consolation. It asked me sometimes uncomfortable questions, and made me reflect on factors in my own life that are under my control, and how I might alter them to better live my friendship values.
I also found a lot of new books to add to my reading list! This isn't a self-help book, and it's not a memoir, nor is it fully academic. It is deeply researched and referenced a lot of other writers and thinkers. I could see that this book was drawing on many conversational threads that have been going for a long time, and will continue to be discussed for a long time. I felt like the writing brought me in so that I could be a more active part of those conversations, too, in my own life as well as in the wider culture.
As I was reading, I pondered what Lee calls friendship and holds up as a deep personal value, and what makes it different from my own highest value that I call community. The Unitarian Universalist Association, a church organization I am a part of, maybe just calls it love. Garrett Bucks is pretty sure it involves potlucks. Are we all talking about the same thing? Or different things? I'm not sure yet, but reading The Politics of Lonely helped me realize something new about the fractal of meaning in relationships and of meaningful relationships I'm trying to weave together in my life. Or start to realize it, and I have more to go. There are definitely some possible answers to some questions in the book, but there are also new questions, and some invitations. It's a topic that could very easily lead one to despair, but while reading The Politics of Lonely, I felt inspired, and really hopeful. I hope you will, too.
The Politics of Lonely: Why is Friendship So Hard is a new book by Lee Arden, published by Fernwood Publishing. You can find it at your local bookstore, or have them order it for you. Find lots of other cool goodies like zines, stickers, etc on Lee's shop Sheer Spite. (US residents, look for the link to the US-specific online storefront so you don't get tariffed right in the face.)
One of the things I was inspired to do after reading this book was... make a mixtape?? Which I gotta admit, is not usually my go-to, but it felt right. Here's an Apple Music playlist I made with some of my favorite songs that are about friendship, community, or other things you might read about in Lee's book. These are some of my favorite songs, all taken from my heavy-rotation listening playlists. (okay not this one but literally every other). I hope you enjoy them!
Oh yeah! Lee also wrote "Clipart Crypt" which I reviewed a couple weeks ago. It's good, too!