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.
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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.
About the Author
Don DeLillo published his first short story when he was twenty-three years old. He has since written twelve novels, including White Noise (1985) which won the National Book Award. It was followed by Libra (1988), his novel about the assassination of President Kennedy, and by Mao II, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.
In 1997, he published the bestselling Underworld, and in 1999 he was awarded the Jerusalem Prize, given to a writer whose work expresses the theme of the freedom of the individual in society; he was the first American author to receive it. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
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Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By LOODY
Format:Paperback
This book superficially deals with two cultures: football in the strange land of West Texas, and the new era of destructive modern warfare. While many morals and parables can be made out of Gary Harkness' excellent and lucid narrative, that he is a modern man in existential despair for example, Delillo's novel insightfully looks at a rational's chronic attempts at figuring out what it all means. Of course, what results is an entirely subjective account of life, but it's one that shuns bigger pictures and individual and cultural differences, embracing instead the need for a more primal experience based purely on the senses, such as football, or even warfare. In this account, bombing Germany means the same as nuking France. It makes no difference, just as bringing in a black football player into a racist land becomes only a footnote. The characters are colorful and you can learn much about human nature just by listening to what they have to say and by watching their body language. Overall, this is a bizarre book that has moments of fantasy, darkness and humor.
Format:Paperback
It is always funny to see someone critical of a book, a film, or a piece of artwork they do not understand. Stick to the "Sports Illustrated" and you'll be fine. It has pictures.
Oh yeah, by the way, I don't understand how they make soda fizzy...I don't like soda.
Oh yeah, by the way, I don't understand how they make soda fizzy...I don't like soda.
By metheb
Format:Paperback
End Zone gives us Don DeLillo in his element, commenting on the American condition through one of its most indellible pasttimes, college football, and with hilarious results.
Pulling from his world of unique characters we are presented with a narrator at his third college in as many years, deep in the heart of Texas, and obsessed with nuclear holocaust. The metaphor of football as war is easily addressed but this story is driven by the quirkiness of its offbeat oddball football players and insane collection of coaches.
The predominatly white, southern team is shaken up with the addition of a potential All-American black running back and their head coaches' desire to retain the gridiron glory he once had. The coach has an undeniable Paul Brown/Woody Hayes quality to him.
The team struggles with each game, their individual neurosis and each other as the country lives in the paranoia and gloom of the nuclear menace.
Without a doubt some of DeLillo's most humorous writing while keeping the aura of his fiction in tact.
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3.9 out of 5 stars
Most recent customer reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
Cliched look at football
I picked up this novel based on the recent Sports Illustrated ranking of top 100 sports books, but it wouldn't make any list of mine. Read more
Published on Jan 18 2003 by Brian M. Ayres
3.0 out of 5 stars
Mediocre DeLillo, clever but cliched
"Football is life is war." DeLillo takes this old observation and turns it into "football is postmodern life is nuclear war. Read more
Published on Aug 3 2001 by Yaumo Gaucho
3.0 out of 5 stars
A football book that isn't about football
Certain football fans may be left dissatisfied with Endzone. A football book that is not really about football at all, DeLillo uses the adventures of Logos College fullback Gary... Read more
Published on Aug 6 2000 by ALEX SOWDEN
5.0 out of 5 stars
My favorite DeLillo
I loved this book. It's odd in a number of ways, all of which I liked a lot, though I imagine they might turn off other readers. Read more
Published on Jun 21 2000 by Stephen Mark
5.0 out of 5 stars
i liked it
it makes cold siberian days warm. good to read over your dinner of potatoes and vodka.
Published on Jan 29 2000
1.0 out of 5 stars
Worst Book
This is the worst book I've ever read in my entire life. I can't believe it that this book was published. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone.
Published on Nov 26 1999
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Great Parable From the 1970's
I couldn't agree less with the reader from Boston, MA. "End Zone" is about as unified a book as you're likely to read. Read more
Published on Oct 1 1999
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Collection of Random Interactions
End Zone is better read as a collection of short stories rather than a continuous narrative. The main protagonist's interactions with his fellow students are fascinating, but... Read more
Published on Sep 22 1999
5.0 out of 5 stars
A hillarious, though still serious, look at college life.
Please read this novel if you are interested in current American fiction. Delillo is an excellent writer, and this novel provides a great introduction to his style. Read more
Published on July 28 1998
4.0 out of 5 stars
Catcher in the Rye Meets North Dallas Forty
DeLillo's insight and wit are at their finest in this tale
of a young man lost among the violence of a world gone
astray. Read more
of a young man lost among the violence of a world gone
astray. Read more
Published on Jan 23 1997
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