The fall season! It’s a time of Broadway debuts, opera openings, Oscar bait, triumphant television returns and fat special issues heralding the sumptuous delights of “the fall season” — packages like the one you are reading right now. The cultural slate arrives like an advent calendar, stuffed with all the goodies that the entertainment industry and the arts world have saved up in anticipation of their dramatic reveals. And this fall was supposed to bring the most dramatic of reveals, the most triumphant of returns, the fattest of special issues — the most deeply metaphorical cultural rebirth of all. (At least, my child’s day care was closed, and my personal fall cultural slate so far consists of experimental pot-banging and close readings of Eric Carle.)

Source: New York Times September 17, 2021 09:01 UTC