End Zone

End Zone

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End Zone

End Zone is the title of Don DeLillo's second novel published in 1972.

It is a light-hearted farce that preshadows much of his later, more mature work. Set at small Logos College in West Texas, End Zone is narrated by Gary Harkness, a blocking back on the American football team during that school's first integrated season.

Plot summary

Cover of the UK first edition.

Gary spends time playing football, picnicing with a girl named Myna, and contemplating both nuclear warfare and extraterrestrial life. Its meditative but ultimately playful nature, spry dialogue, and deep but mostly unconnected themes make End Zone an enjoyable read, and perhaps the most easily accessible of DeLillo's early works. The metaphor of football as warfare is challenged in the line "warfare is warfare."

"It's only a game but it's the only game."

Film adaptation

In 2007, Joshua director George Ratliff started pre-production on a feature film adaptation of End Zone. Josh Hartnett has been announced in the role of Gary.^[1]