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Don DeLillo

End Zone Paperback – January 1, 1986

by Don DeLillo (Author)

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The second novel by Don DeLillo, author of White Noise (winner of the National Book Award) and The Silence

At Logos College in West Texas, huge young men, vacuum-packed into shoulder pads and shiny helmets, play football with intense passion. During an uncharacteristic winning season, the perplexed and distracted running back Gary Harkness has periodic fits of nuclear glee; he is fueled and shielded by his fear of and fascination with nuclear conflict. Among oddly afflicted and recognizable players, the terminologies of football and nuclear war--the language of end zones--become interchangeable, and their meaning deteriorates as the collegiate year runs its course. In this triumphantly funny, deeply searching novel, Don DeLillo explores the metaphor of football as war with rich, original zeal.

Print length

242 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Penguin Books
Publication date

January 1, 1986
Dimensions

5.12 x 0.69 x 7.74 inches
ISBN-10

0140085688
ISBN-13

978-0140085686
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Don DeLillo's second novel, a sort of Dr. Strangelove meets North Dallas Forty, solidified his place in the American literary landscape in the early 1970s. The story of an angst-ridden, war-obsessed running back for Logos College in West Texas, End Zone is a heady and hilarious conflation of Cold War existentialism and the parodied parallelism of battlefield/sports rhetoric. When not arguing nuclear endgame strategy with his professor, Major Staley, narrator Gary Harkness joins a brilliant and unlikely bunch of overmuscled gladiators on the field and in the dormitory. In characteristic fashion, DeLillo deliberately undermines the football-is-combat cliché by having one of his characters explain: "I reject the notion of football as warfare. Warfare is warfare. We don't need substitutes because we've got the real thing." What remains is an insightful examination of language in an alien, postmodern world, where a football player's ultimate triumph is his need to play the game.

Review

Praise for End Zone:

"We've got the real thing in Don DeLillo. This is a wondrous work by an inventive talent."
—The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Wonderful . . . [End Zone] makes one wonder whether there are any limits at all to [DeLillo's] potential growth."
—The New York Times

"Powerfully funny, oblique, testy, and playful, tearing along in dazzling cinematic spurts . . . A masterful novel."
—The Washington Post

"Taut, witty, and resonant. The dialogue is sweaty and true."
—The Boston Globe

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Books; Reprint edition (January 1, 1986)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 242 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0140085688
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0140085686
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 7.4 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.12 x 0.69 x 7.74 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #317,740 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,883 in Fiction Satire
- #4,019 in Humorous Fiction
- #18,004 in Literary Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
102 ratings

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Don DeLillo

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Don DeLillo is the author of fifteen novels, including Zero K, Underworld, Falling Man, White Noise, and Libra. He has won the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the Jerusalem Prize for his complete body of work, and the William Dean Howells Medal from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2010, he was awarded the PEN/Saul Bellow Prize. The Angel Esmeralda was a finalist for the 2011 Story Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. In 2012, DeLillo received the Carl Sandburg Literary Award for his body of work.

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3 star		12%
2 star		4%
1 star		7%

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McGill

Football, War Games, Mock Picnics, Exobiology, Dark Sunglasses

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 18, 2011

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"End Zone," Don Delillo's second novel, isn't so much DeLillo primer as it is like a few strokes of some of the themes DeLillo might (and in some cases will) touch on later. It's definitely not his greatest work and if you're new to his stuff I'd point you in the direction of something like "Libra" or "White Noise," both of which came later in DeLillo's career and (for me) pick apart more interesting subjects.

Think about the desert. Almost no air, nothing much moving, just dirt or sand and rocks, the sun beating down on you as you make your way across. That's what reading parts of "End Zone" feels like, which is convenient, because the book is set in a desertish part of Texas with almost no air, nothing much moving, just dirt or sand and rocks, etc. The barren landscape (not a beautiful picture once you conjure it up for a period of reading even a short book such as this one) matches the sparse, dry sentences that make up much of the conversation, most of which can be breezed through so quickly because it's so emotionless. Every now and then though one of the book's over-the-top characters will get rolling on a subject such as nuclear war or a passage from a science fiction book or football that halfway through you might wonder where it is you're going. For the most part, the things people say in this book aren't things they would say in real life. College athletes don't worry about these kinds of things. That's where DeLillo's super creative and makes them obsessed with language, personal history and (for the narrator) nuclear war in all of its glory which he doesn't understand and the knowledge of which he desires to consume more and more.

I don't know where the concepts of sport-as-war and athlete-as-warrior came from, though the way DeLillo uses them feels and sounds dated. You'll feel like he's exhausted every symbol and metaphor he could come with by the time you're say 70% of the way through the book. This isn't to say that he doesn't make things interesting! One of the narrator's professors says that he rejects the concept of sport as warfare; warfare is warfare, no substitute required because they have the real thing. It's a rare antithetical moment to probably the most obvious thing in the book, its whole preoccupation. Reading about the players in practice is like reading military drill, the game like slow reenactments of battle. The second third or so of the book details almost play-by-play an important game; it's vivid, excruciating, and you won't find it anywhere else.

In short, "End Zone" makes the same point over and over again, and with the way DeLillo uses language, he'll probably drop some readers here and there. It's hard to know for sure 100% if you know what he's saying, not just in "End Zone" but in some of his other books as well. DeLillo is one of my favorite writers though and "End Zone" simply just isn't my favorite, though it is good and intriguing and whatnot. It's his second book and even though it's obvious he has a knack for writing from the start, trust me, he just gets better. See "The Names" (1982) and "White Noise" (1985) and "Libra" (1988) and if you've got time (and it'd be completely worth it) take on "Underworld" (1997) which besides being a great book also doubles as a desk.

Oh and remember: much of DeLillo's work is meant to be funny, even though he might be completely serious... right?

7 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

DeLillo at his finest

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 17, 2022

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The best novel of the 20th century. There is no one who can write like DeLillo. The ingenuity of the dialogue and of the narrator’s meditative wanderings is simply unmatched by anything I’ve ever read. The section on the game they start playing, Bang You’re Dead, is absolutely dazzling. I don’t use the word dazzling. I’m using the word dazzling.

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Keith

FNL goes to small college and much more

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 18, 2014

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This is the first Don DeLillo book I've read and I liked it from page one, loved it through page N-1 (N approx. = 250), and then was a little let down. I am kind of a closure freak, though, and N-2 pages of great reading makes for a hard-to-beat experience. The plot line here is pretty straightforward. It can be described as Friday Night Lights goes to small college, some curricular concerns occasionally surface (more in the form of dorm-room banter than classroom enlightenment), and the characters show sporadic signs of maturity or at least approximations thereof. The plot takes enough interesting twists that the book sustains itself well. (It would be ideal for a transcontinental flight.) The main strengths of the book are its characters and their alternatingly witty, trenchant, and--the closer you get to the football field and coaches--ludicrously vacuous dialogue. Highly entertaining and highly recommended; convinced me to read more DeLillo.

5 people found this helpful

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nancy lapidus

This is not a book about football.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 5, 2012

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If you enjoy language and irony, you will love End Zone. The setting is a small Texas college. Attention is focused on the football team, their preparations, and a struggle to gain the 60 yard line in a game with a team they know is superior. The moves are communicated in pre-arranged codes. They get beaten to a pulp. The fans don't really understand that they have been badly physically injured. All they see are the codes and the action. The college gives a program in ROTC in which the hero-narrator excels. The language of technology in warfare is given, but the significance of the damage done to humans can't actually be realized behind the language. The author claims this book is not about warfare. I think it would be fair to say that it is not only about warfare, but the many aspects of our realities that are hidden behind language, such as the cliches that are expressed at funerals and death. The slogans and homilies distance us from the pain of it.

This all is very serious, but every page has a laugh, which I think brings us closer to the truths.

Nancy B.
Gainesville FL

8 people found this helpful

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Kenneth Walter Simpson

A brilliant satirical tour de force

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 16, 2011

Verified Purchase

The Learning Process: Some Creative Impressions END ZONE is an examination and analysis of attitudes to aggression and violence through the mind of Gary Harkness, who plays gridiron for an obscure Texas college. A new head coach, Emmett Creed - a looming, omnipotent presence - is hired to improve the teams performances, along with a team of specialist coaches who are, in effect, extensions of Creed's violent philosophy - which is the application of intense aggression in order win games. "All Creed's assistants have their piggish aspects . . ." One of these is aptly named 'Hauptfuhrer'. Religion is invoked, either as a form of brainwashing or for inspirational purposes. "Hauptfuhrer was standing over us. "Shut up and pray," he said. Creed's coaching methods ultimately prove to be successful.

The novel is hilarious, violent and dark in turn, as Gary philosophises manically with his roommates, teammates, girlfriend or alone in the desert. He also attends warfare classes, although professing to be a pacifist, and is lectured on 'the first-strike survival capability of our nuclear arsenal'. The dichotomy between the catastrophic consequences of nuclear warfare, and warfare on the football field is the theme of this brilliantly written second novel by one of our finest contemporary writers.

2 people found this helpful

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Radek

The will to power

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 18, 2015

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For someone who knows virtually nothing about American football this wasn’t an easy novel for me to read. The only two Delillo novels I hadn’t read were this and Americana, his first and I’m determined to complete the set. I think it was Martin Amis who said that when we say we love an author we generally mean we love half of the novels written by them. This is certainly true for me with regards DeLillo. I hated Ratner’s Star and was left indifferent by Point Omega, Cosmopolis and Players. However Underworld, Mao 2, White Noise and Libra are all among my favourite novels of all time.
This was Delillo’s second novel and there’s a sense of him straining to find his stride and voice. The mesmerising urban lyricism of his middle period is not quite on display here. There are, though, several of his favourite motifs – most prevailingly his use of jargon to create an atmosphere of misinformation, disenchantment and detachment. “The pattern match begins with a search for a substring of a given string that has a specified structure in the string manipulation language”
It’s essentially a novel about power. The yearning to acquire power and the means available to us for acquiring it nowadays. The central character is a star running back for a collegiate football team. He’s ambivalent in his strivings for power. He has a penchant for self-destruction. For sabotaging his prospects. Football, like war, is a power struggle of synchronised strategy, bluffed manoeuvres, ordered systems of advancement and a constant parallel is both drawn up and deconstructed in the novel between football and war. “War is the ultimate realization of modern technology. For centuries men have tested themselves in war. War was the final test, the great experience, the privilege, the honour, the self-sacrifice or what have you, the absolutely ultimate determination of what kind of man you were. War was the great challenge and the great evaluator. It told you how much you were worth. But it’s different today. Few men want to go off and fight. We prove ourselves, our manhood, in other ways, in making money, in skydiving, in hunting mountain lions with bow and arrow, in acquiring power of one kind or another. And I think we can forget ideology”
The central female character is massively and purposefully overweight. She is wilfully renouncing the power of her beauty. “It’s hard to be beautiful. You have an obligation to people. You almost become public property. You can lose yourself and get almost mentally disturbed on just the public nature of being beautiful. Don’t think I haven’t thought about it. You can get completely lost in that whole dumb mess. And anyway who’s to say what’s beautiful and what’s ugly?”
One hugely memorable scene is an impromptu game of football played in driving snow. There’s a lot of humour and wilful absurdity (one character is learning by heart Rilke’s Duino elegies in the original despite not knowing a word of German; another collects insects).
I’m finding this is one of those novels that seems much richer and cleverer in retrospect when I think about it than it did while reading it.

One person found this helpful

W J Smith-Bowers

A New Catcher in the Texas Rye

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 4, 2018

Verified Purchase

This is a remarkable novel - even after 45 years since its publication its avant-Garda, playful but at times boring quality offer the reader experiences in words - in college, in nuclear warfare, in speech making and football. Chapter 19 is a wonderful moment of sports and militarised writing.

Elise Hughes

Damaged cover

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 3, 2017

Verified Purchase

Delivery was good but the cover came damaged even though the box and other items were undamaged. This was meant to be a christmas present but was a waste of money and disappointment

Tom Gray

DELillo and Hobbes

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on April 12, 2018

Verified Purchase

The blurb on the back cover the Penguin edition of "End Zone", that I bought from Amazon, contains the sentence "In this triumphantly funny novel, Don DeLillo explores the borders of organized violence. I take this to mean the descriptions of football and nuclear war strategy. This is correct but is, in my opinion, is far from a complete description of the novel. For me, the novel is about how humanity and individual human beings attempt to transcend a primal violence which is part of their nature. DeLillo world in “End Zone” is the natural world of Hobbes and not the peaceful world of Rousseau. Stripped to its basics, DeLillo’s humanity is a violent competitive species with people enjoying the fight. Society intervenes in this and with organization attempts to channel this innate violence to prevent anarchy. The organized, deeply analyzed violence of football and nuclear diplomacy are shown thusly as ways that the innately violent nature of humanity can be declawed.

‘End Zone” is a novel about people trying to transcend their basic nature and achieve more.

tomomori

アメフト小説………なのか！？

Reviewed in Japan 🇯🇵 on August 6, 2016

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現代米文学の巨匠、ドン・デリーロである。テキサス州西部のロゴス大学ってトコでアメフトに励むデカい野郎どもの青春がテーマ…ではない。いや、キャラはアメフト選手たちだが、舞台がロゴス大学だからして…ロゴスよ、ロゴス。言語、意味、論理、思想。主役は「言語」そのものなんじゃないかと感じられる時がある。アメフト野郎どもがフィールドで語り、寮で語り、お互いコミュニケーション取ってんのかどうかさえ定かじゃない、コミュニケーションを求めてんのかさえ分からん、コミュニケーションが成立しようがしまいがどうでもいいってな言語交換をえんえん展開する。これがやたら可笑しい。マジで可笑しくて、たまにヒーヒーヒーと肩を震わせて笑ってしまう。しかしコイツらアホや思っていると、何だか凄く面白い事や深淵っぽい事を言っているので思わず真剣に読んでしまう（このアメフト選手たちの中に何故かユダヤ系の名前が多いのよね）。しかし野郎どもの会話ではそれがすぐに別方向に行くか、相手が「聞いちゃいない」という状態になったりする。
これはコメディだと思うんだが、しかし根底に流れるテーマは「死」であり「世界的な大量殺戮」だったりする。何たって主人公が夢見てるのがそれだからして。殺して殺して殺しまくりたい、と彼は夢見ている。「死」に魅せられた主人公は、仲間同士で戦争ゴッコなぞをすると、誠心誠意、「死」を演じ、「死体」を演じる。そして呟く、「A verity less than eternal has little appeal」と。笑うとこだと思うのだが、何故か軽く感動したりもする。イイ図体の大学生どもが戦争ゴッコなぞして、このような言語を思惟してしまうってなその妙な心の動きに。
言語とはそもそも全てメタファーであるから、ある事を語っていて全く別の事象にシームレスに繋がっていく。大仰な言語で語られるアメフト論が新兵訓練論に聞こえてくるし、ユダヤ人としてのアイデンティティ論が不思議な形而上論になり、夢の中に登場する「女」が何か別の物になる。お互いの体格を語りながら、それが破壊兵器のメタファーになっていく。スポーツと戦争が同じ表現と語彙で語られる言語マジックに妙な陶酔感を誘われ、全てが「言語ゲーム」なのかと思われてくる。ロゴスと呼ばれる場所で展開する、巨大な肉体同士の勝利と破壊を目指す生理運動。そこから発生する言語遊戯。このように歴史は作られるのかと。

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