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End Zone Paperback – January 1, 1986

by Don DeLillo (Author)
4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 190 ratings
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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.
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  1. Print length
    242 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Penguin Books
  4. Publication date
    January 1, 1986
  5. Dimensions
    5.14 x 0.69 x 7.73 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0140085688
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0140085686
  8. See all details
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From the Publisher

Americana End Zone Great Jones Street White Noise Libra Mao II
Americana End Zone Great Jones Street White Noise Libra Mao II
More Titles by Don Delillo ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

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 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.14 x 0.69 x 7.73 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 190 ratings

About the author

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Don DeLillo

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.

Customer reviews

4 out of 5 stars
4 out of 5
190 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Kenneth Walter Simpson
5.0 out of 5 stars A brilliant satirical tour de force
Reviewed in the United States on March 16, 2011
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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.
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McGill
4.0 out of 5 stars 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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Edward M Measure
3.0 out of 5 stars Definitely oddball football players pondering life, football, and ...
Reviewed in the United States on May 27, 2016
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Definitely oddball football players pondering life, football, and nuclear apocalypse somewhere in Southwest Texas. Not much happens. Delillo has some obvious talent but not much interest in conventional storytelling, though there is a bit of that thrown in. A lot of peculiar but frequently amusing dialog.
3 people found this helpful
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x_bruce
5.0 out of 5 stars DeLillo's easiest and quite rewarding narrative
Reviewed in the United States on August 10, 2017
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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.
5 people found this helpful
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Keith
4.0 out of 5 stars 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.
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Top reviews from other countries

Lawrence T. Knipfing
5.0 out of 5 stars A great book.
Reviewed in Japan on May 27, 2021
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Loved it!
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Tom Gray
4.0 out of 5 stars DELillo and Hobbes
Reviewed in Canada on April 12, 2018
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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.
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Radek
3.0 out of 5 stars 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.
2 people found this helpful
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W J Smith-Bowers
3.0 out of 5 stars A New Catcher in the Texas Rye
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 4, 2018
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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.
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Elise Hughes
1.0 out of 5 stars Damaged cover
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 3, 2017
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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
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Elise Hughes
1.0 out of 5 stars Damaged cover
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 3, 2017
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
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