{"id":748,"date":"2013-09-01T12:07:56","date_gmt":"2013-09-01T20:07:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/?p=748"},"modified":"2017-12-18T13:27:35","modified_gmt":"2017-12-18T21:27:35","slug":"review-end-zone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2013\/09\/01\/review-end-zone\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: End Zone"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/11764\" style=\"float: left;padding-right: 20px\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net\/books\/1328334978m\/11764.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"End Zone\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n      <a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/11764\">End Zone<\/a> by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/author\/show\/233\">Don DeLillo<\/a><br \/>\n      My rating: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/review\/show\/709051066\">3 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n<p>      Another DeLillo novel, another book I probably didn\u2019t get. What do you call someone who reads a lot of the same thing\u2014an aficionado, an expert, a scholar? I want to get the right word; you see, I know this guy\u2019s who\u2019s read a lot of DeLillo, and he\u2019s already a scholar, as he\u2019s a professor, but I don\u2019t think he teaches DeLillo specifically. But this guy I know, he\u2019s really really smart. And so I read these book and I don\u2019t get it and I must be such a disappointment.<\/p>\n<p>Actually, I\u2019m sure he doesn\u2019t care. And look, I am not taking pride in this ignorance of mine, but then I\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n<p>Which were pretty good. So let me do this, let me rail against the back-cover copy of the edition I read, which says \u201cAmong some of the players, the terminologies of football and nuclear war\u2014the language of end zones\u2014become interchangeable, and their meaning deteriorates as the collegiate year runs its course.\u201d Bullshit!<\/p>\n<p>I know some folks like to point out how football and war have the same vocabulary. But that\u2019s 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\u2019t \u201cget it,\u201d I can assure you, the terminologies of football and nuclear war do NOT become interchangeable, and the title has nothing to do with either.<\/p>\n<p>Read Don DeLillo, if you like Don DeLillo. Read <i>End Zone<\/i> if you like that aspect of football, the grit and the silliness, the earnestness of its most dedicated losers. But don\u2019t give me any crap, whether you do or don\u2019t get it, like me, about its language. Words are just words.<\/p>\n<p>      <a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/review\/show\/709051066\">View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>End Zone by Don DeLillo My rating: 3 of 5 stars Another DeLillo novel, another book I probably didn\u2019t get. What do you call someone who reads a lot of the same thing\u2014an aficionado, an expert, a scholar? I want to get the right word; you see, I know this guy\u2019s who\u2019s read a lot &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2013\/09\/01\/review-end-zone\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Review: End Zone&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p24y52-c4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=748"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":749,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748\/revisions\/749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}