End Zone by Don DeLillo
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Another DeLillo novel, another book I probably didn’t get. What do you call someone who reads a lot of the same thing—an aficionado, an expert, a scholar? I want to get the right word; you see, I know this guy’s who’s read a lot of DeLillo, and he’s already a scholar, as he’s a professor, but I don’t think he teaches DeLillo specifically. But this guy I know, he’s really really smart. And so I read these book and I don’t get it and I must be such a disappointment.
Actually, I’m sure he doesn’t care. And look, I am not taking pride in this ignorance of mine, but then I’m not really ashamed, either. Pages of details on a table-top war-game scenario. Long paragraphs of self-indulgent psychophilosophizing. Is this hypermodern writing, is that what this is? And all I wanted was the football scenes.
Which were pretty good. So let me do this, let me rail against the back-cover copy of the edition I read, which says “Among some of the 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.” Bullshit!
I know some folks like to point out how football and war have the same vocabulary. But that’s a convenience, barely worth writing a whole book about, and certainly an insult to soldiers and players alike. And in as much as I claim I didn’t “get it,” I can assure you, the terminologies of football and nuclear war do NOT become interchangeable, and the title has nothing to do with either.
Read Don DeLillo, if you like Don DeLillo. Read End Zone if you like that aspect of football, the grit and the silliness, the earnestness of its most dedicated losers. But don’t give me any crap, whether you do or don’t get it, like me, about its language. Words are just words.