![]() Although Bachelder’s ( U.S.!) characters sometimes blend indistinguishably into one another-perhaps not unintentionally-the anxieties and concerns that define them are genuine. ![]() As the men discuss their static marriages and their difficult relationships with their children, the allure of the game-especially the time before the fateful play when “the things that had not happened yet were greater than the things that had happened”-becomes clear. What at first seems a slightly screwball form of fantasy football-the men are assigned their roles through a lottery governed by an idiosyncratically detailed set of rules-gradually reveals itself to be a metaphor-rich elaboration of the rules and regulations that shape mature male life. Every year for the past 16 years, 22 men have convened at a hotel at an unnamed location off of Interstate 95 to physically re-enact the historic game. A real-life football tragedy-the sacking of Washington Redskins quarterback Joe Theismann by New York Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor in a 1985 game, and the career-ending injury that Theismann sustained as a result-is the foundation of this wryly amusing rumination on manhood and male bonding. ![]()
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