End Zone

Rating:
Summary: Mediocre DeLillo, clever but cliched
Review: "Football is life is war." DeLillo takes this old observation and turns it into "football is postmodern life is nuclear war." He spends most of the book hitting the reader over the head with the comparison between football and nuclear war, something one could have gotten from just the pun of the title.

This book feels dated. Both football and nuclear war were more relevant in the 1970s/80s. Even if you'd like to read DeLillo doing sports, Underworld may be a better place to find that.

However, this is a good place to find the germination of some of DeLillo's favorite themes, such as brand names, the German language, and nuclear strategy. Another treat is that Leopold Bloom from James Joyce's Ulysses appears here, as the character Bloomberg; you'll see Bloomberg give some of Bloom's monologues from Ulysses, recast into football terms.

As in any DeLillo novel, the language is brilliant, and the dialogue is hilariously unreal. However, the plot is thin (admittedly, I'm not a football fan), the themes are cliched and not developed beyond endless repetition of the football-war analogy, and nothing much really happens. It's a fast read, and not a bad choice if you like football, or if you've read all the other DeLillo novels, but this is certainly not DeLillo at his best.

Rating:
Summary: Mediocre DeLillo, clever but cliched
Review: "Football is life is war." DeLillo takes this old observation and turns it into "football is postmodern life is nuclear war." He spends most of the book hitting the reader over the head with the comparison between football and nuclear war, something one could have gotten from just the pun of the title.

This book feels dated. Both football and nuclear war were more relevant in the 1970s/80s. Even if you'd like to read DeLillo doing sports, Underworld may be a better place to find that.

However, this is a good place to find the germination of some of DeLillo's favorite themes, such as brand names, the German language, and nuclear strategy. Another treat is that Leopold Bloom from James Joyce's Ulysses appears here, as the character Bloomberg; you'll see Bloomberg give some of Bloom's monologues from Ulysses, recast into football terms.

As in any DeLillo novel, the language is brilliant, and the dialogue is hilariously unreal. However, the plot is thin (admittedly, I'm not a football fan), the themes are cliched and not developed beyond endless repetition of the football-war analogy, and nothing much really happens. It's a fast read, and not a bad choice if you like football, or if you've read all the other DeLillo novels, but this is certainly not DeLillo at his best.

Rating:
Summary: A football book that isn't about football
Review: 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 Harkness as a point of departure from which to explore aspects of post-structuralist systems theory that became his trademark in later books. DeLillo's study of the polysemous nature of language in relation to meaning is first-rate. The parallel he establishes between the jargon of football and nuclear war demonstrates how the deterioration of semiotic meaning within language can threaten personal creativity and individuality. Caught in this suffocating network of interlocking symbol systems, Gary finds in football the only means by which to express himself freely and independent of the sterile reality around him. For Gary, football is an end unto itself, whose jargon and primitive physical contact provides him with an alternative system of meaning away from the ascetic chaos of the postmodern world. In this way, DeLillo underlines the inherent value both of physical activity and verbal creativity as expressions of individuality, which rise above the constraints of a language system devoid of expressiveness and order. An oblique and thoughtful novel, Endzone may enthral you - but only if you have the inclination. Those of you, however, who are neither literature students nor semiotic theory enthusiasts, may find it tiresome, pretentious, or just plain dull.

Rating:
Summary: DeLillo's hilarious satire of football and cold war paranoia
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Parable From the 1970's
Review: 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. It is quite obviously a parable with football standing in for nuclear war. As such, it is impossible to break it down into several component stories. There is an obvious beginning, middle and end: you have the arms build-up and the machismo of the preparation for war; the war itself, which is notably the shortest part of the book; and, finally, the long, painful and bizarre aftermath. There's no question that the rich, humorous characters add to the enjoyment but their stories serve the larger plot. The book makes no sense if you can't see it in its entirety. You might as well watch Wildcats if you think this is a simple football book.

Rating:
Summary: My favorite DeLillo
Review: 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. First, it's about football and it really gets into the mechanics of the game. Non-fans might feel a little left out reading a four or five page description of a team's 60-yard drive. These scenes are gritty and journalistic; you get a real sense of it. Then there's the loopy conversations of the players. They're all at a football school in the desert, suffering in the sun, running and wrestling on the hard dusty fields. In their spare time they have earnest, sophisticated discussions about the nature of existence. Not realistic, but the combination completely worked for me at a metaphorical level. Hard work, hot sun, hard thinking, fights. Isn't that just what we all want?

Rating:
Summary: Cliched look at football
Review: 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. Good but not great, Delillo juxtaposes college football with nuclear warfare in what was meant as a satirical look at American life in the 1950s. It came off as a confusing, contrived mesh between the two.

Where Delillo does score well is on the dialogue. The comical conversations by teammates on the bench during pivitol action seem so real. And Delillo's terminology and feel for the game is stunningly accurate.

I found book too heady to comprehend. But in layman's terms I believe Delillo was simply trying to say that war is too grave to be compared to a game taken vastly too serious by a gladiator culture.

However, I felt Delillo was also trying to make the point that war and football are practiced by at times neurotic and destructive individuals.

Rating:
Summary: Read this book if you aspire to be a writer
Review: I've read the first two paragraphs of DeLillo's "End Zone" perhaps a hundred times and always marvel at the clarity, economy, and power of his direct, adjective-free writing style. This book has influenced my writing as much as any (I'm a newspaper reporter/editor).

Two of my favorite books are "football" books: This one and Roy Blount Jr.'s "About Three Bricks Shy of A Load," an inside-the-team-bus account of the Pittsburgh Steelers' 1973 season. Both are peopled with characters human, flawed, appalling and funny; both use quotes in fresh and startling ways; and both are terrific slices of the American Pie.

Rating:
Summary: i liked it
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Texas Football and Nuclear Annihilation
Review: This is my favorite book. I have read most of DeLillo's other books and found them to be everything form pompous to strained to boring. But this is a gem. It is not a sports book and while I'm sure a lot of people would want to intellectualize about it, I loved it because it is just plain funny. Unlike some of his other books, DeLillo seems to let himself go and fully explore what has to be a marvelous if somewhat bizarre imagination. I'd describe it but you wouldn't believe it if I did