End Zone Paperback – January 7, 1986

A wonderful book that juxtaposes sports with war. It may sound dry but DeLillo has written his most accessible novel.

The simplicity of plot underlies a rich subtext of the way humans act, or react while often not being aware or understanding their own intent in life.

Were I was teaching high school literature this would be required reading if only to help younger minds learn about critical thinking within a moderately easy read.

Without ruining the book the young protagonist suffers from "nuclear glee," a phrase that stays with me years after reading this fine book. It is a relatively straight forward novel with postmodern leanings . Still, the narrative is easy to follow despite its alternate perspectives.

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.

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

"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?