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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.
Book Description
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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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
a psychological novel,
By LOODY (Boston) - See all my reviews
This review is from: End Zone (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.
5.0 out of 5 stars
I Don't Get It???,
By sanigav "sanigav" (T dot O dot) - See all my reviews
This review is from: End Zone (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.
4.0 out of 5 stars
DeLillo's hilarious satire of football and cold war paranoia,
By metheb (Seattle, wa United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: End Zone (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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