Phoebe Maltz Bovy

That Absolutely Fabulous is a women show, about women, with men barely seen or referenced, is… not something I find myself all that aware of when watching it. Yes I realize it was groundbreaking, but also, it is so deeply unwholesome, the women such non-role-models, that it is not an eat-your-vegetables walking (or, when exiting cars, drunkenly falling) Bechdel Test. It’s about a universe quite similar to that of Sex and the City, rich white women in big cities in fashion and PR, hovering around 40, but it’s not, as that is, constantly in reference to men.

It's not Saffy Monsoon's job to educate you The 'Absolutely Fabulous' 1990s, Part I

Part I of AbFab rewatch analysis. Real drop what you're doing times I assure. phoebemaltzbovy.substack.com/p/its-not-sa...

Thank you Josh!

Great piece on the burgeoning essay genre of Jews writing for non-Jews about all the Guilty Jews who have not sufficiently repented for their crimes

I really liked this column by @phoebebovy.bsky.social , and in particular how it flags a gap (chasm) I've long seen between how prevalent people THINK Jewish stories are in popular culture versus how rare they're actually seen.

Thanks David!

If I understood what any of this meant I would have a different career a different LIFE

Unfortunately I think the problem one runs into is that having the qualities that lead to amassing money on that scale goes along with having other qualities.

This was what wound up bugging me the most. How am I supposed to assess the claims if it's all grand gesturing at books that are not named? And if (my best guess) some are real but from the 1960s, what relevance is this to the "literary establishment" of today?

No, the most ridiculous is to do a Great Big Manifesto about Literature and not actually say *which* books you're talking about, leaving the reader trying to piece together whether these are even real books. What a strange choice!

So yes as an artistic matter it's ridiculous to ask fiction to be about any specific topic, ridiculous-plus to ask diaspora Jews to only do fiction that is op-eds about the Middle East, AND ridiculous to suggest the publishing industry is not already on the case. None of this is the most ridiculous.

In thinking ahead to future books coverage, I recently found myself combing all summer 2026 publications available to Canadian readers, in search of Jewish content, preferably but not necessarily Canadian. Search terms came up short, as they will so I went for full, painstaking combing. And there was almost nothing Jewish, along with nothing-nothing Canadian Jewish. (I have since learned I may have missed a children’s picture book that ticks both boxes. My apologies.) There were, however, many titles about Gaza, about Palestinian suffering: Your Presence Is a Danger to Your Life: Voices from Gaza. We Are Not Numbers: The Voices of Gaza’s Youth. The Keys to My House: A Gaza Diary. Gaza Apocalypse. The Complicit Lens: US Media Coverage of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza. This is not comprehensive. I list these books not to tsk-tsk their publication but to offer a barometer of where the North American publishing industry is at these days.

Similarly, Palestinians are suffering. But to pin the source of that suffering on 'North American literary community closed off to that topic' in light of which new books are actually coming out seems odd in light of... actual new and forthcoming books?

Now Gaza *itself* is more of a crisis than who's writing which fiction in Canada, this is a separate question than whether anything productive is accomplished by issuing unenforceable mission statements about what North American Jewish novelists "must" do *in their art.*

At a time when there's a new Canadian Jewish novel of *any* sort every trillion years and newspapers don't have books sections and 'author' pays zilch, is the crisis in the field a lack of Gaza-related content? Some thoughts for @thecjn.bsky.social thecjn.ca/opinion/pers...

It gives me hope.

agree with this (hah) but also think a particular mistake the left made for a long time online, and still makes to an extent, is failing to understand that the person whose mind you may actually change is the one reading the argument you're having, not the one you're arguing with

Have you seen the Toronto version of this?? Where a kid buys fish at the St. Lawrence Market?

Well that was an invigorating two hour plus public transit journey to... the indoor playground.

Thank you!! I hadn’t even considered Mother’s Day for this but why not!

Are you expecting me to tell you *not* to pre-order my book? Please please do the thing.

Woke 1 vs Woke 2, trying to figure this out, it is a gender thing, it is Hillary vs Bernie 2.0, it is something else?

Yes-and-ing this with a tangential thought I have whenever someone's trying to promote some kind of Jew-free 21st century American culture, aside from the obvious problems with this, what are they even picturing?

Out May 19th!! www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/745513...

The huge success of "actually eating steak and butter every day is GOOD for me" is great evidence for the Everyone is 12 Now theory

Fair.

Can you imagine Harris or Hillary in that image?

Amy Klobuchar at least thinks about it bsky.app/profile/phoe...

This is about the not actually feminist belief that women would react to merely reading about terrible men by altering our sexual orientations, but also about the time I messed up on a podcast.

Lessons from the Pelicot story Of all the people about whom I might have found myself typing ‘has a boyfriend,’ the one I’m about to mention is possibly the person one would least expect.

open.substack.com/pub/phoebema...

The demands will be

a) pls wash the dishes and remember my birthday

or b) be a 6’2 clavmaxxer alpha non-chud, none of which is anything women remotely want or understand