The story opens with an arresting, vividly detailed description of an eighty-yard run made from scrimmage by Christian Darling, a football player at a Midwestern university. Immediately after the descriptive passage, the reader learns that Darling made the run during football practice in 1925, fifteen years earlier, and that the episode has been reconstructed in his mind as he stands on the same practice field, the site of his former triumph. Now thirty-five, Darling recalls and retraces his downhill course in life from that moment of triumph and promise.

Christian’s fellow players, his coaches, and his girlfriend, Louise Tucker, were impressed and predicted great accomplishments for him. Louise proudly drove him from the field in her convertible and kissed him in such a way that he knew for the first time that she belonged to him. However, the promise of glory at a major university was not fulfilled. A German boy named Diederich came from the third string and proved a better ball carrier than anyone else around, being named to All-American teams. For two years, Christian, a good blocker, cleared the path for his teammate through the big linemen of Michigan, Purdue, and Illinois. Still, he was considered an important man on campus, and an adoring Louise lavished gifts on him.

After graduation, Christian and Louise married and moved to New York City, where Christian became a representative of his father-in-law’s company, an ink manufacturing firm. While Christian worked, Louise attended plays and visited art galleries. She acquired a taste for modern painters such as Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and Paul Klee, decorating their expensive Manhattan apartment with reproductions of their paintings. Christian preferred paintings of animals to theirs. When the economic crash of 1929 came, Louise’s father lost everything, and Christian was left unemployed.

With time on their hands, Louise wanted to continue her cultural activities, but Christian had developed no aesthetic or intellectual interests. He began to seek solace in drinking, leaving Louise to pursue her interests on her own. She found a job with a woman’s magazine that paid enough to meet their expenses. The best that Christian could do was to land a few temporary jobs that provided no significant income.

Louise’s work brought her into closer contact with writers, intellectuals, and artists. At parties with Louise’s friends, Christian felt bored and out of place, whereas she found them exhilarating. Christian did not understand the conversations or the references to obscure poets, composers, philosophers, or leftist politicians. Moments of tenderness between Christian and his wife grew more infrequent. In one poignant scene, he embraced her as she was sitting in the bathtub and asked that she not call him “Baby.”

When Christian and Louise received an invitation from a labor leader to a performance of Clifford Odets’s Waiting for Lefty (1935), Christian preferred to remain home drinking and accepted the reality that his wife would attend plays with others. Still too much in love with her to want a divorce, he lived with her harmoniously but distantly. Finally he received a job offer as a sales representative for a clothing firm. The job required traveling because the major outlets were colleges and universities. Except for holidays, he would be home only once a month. He hoped that Louise would urge him not to accept the offer, but as he expected, she thought that he should take it. Louise now looked on him with “a kind of patient, kindly, remote, boredom.”

The narrative returns to the practice field where it began, his alma mater being among the colleges that Christian visits on business. Having reflected on...