“Maybe he had heard others use it and thought it was a remark demanded by history, a way of affirming the meaning of one's straggle. Maybe the words were commissioned, as it were, by language itself, by that compartment of language in which are kept all bits of diction designed to outlive the men who abuse them, all phrases that reduce speech to units of sounds, lullabies processed through intricate systems.”

In retrospect, it’s hard not to read End Zone as a rehearsal for DeLillo's later novels; most of the concerns here are fleshed out and expanded on elsewhere. Nuclear disaster, war, and academia in White Noise. Sport, tradition, and the relation of objects and spaces to silence in Underworld. Optics and linguistic struggle in Libra and mass ritual in Mao II.

Ultimately, DeLillo is preoccupied with language. How it is used, by people and systems, how it changes and molds and affects people. How we use it, or how it uses us, or how we are used through it. There are incredible passages on that subject in End Zone, even if the novel doesn’t reach the heights of Libra or Underworld. Few do!

As with Great Jones Street, there are some unsavory comedic elements here that haven’t aged well. And his singular approach to dialogue doesn't always land in the way it would in his later writing. But the central metaphor is inspired and explored with impressive depth, and the prose itself is astounding. I don’t think any novelist diagnosed the (post-)modern condition as well as DeLillo did. He was able to render that diagnosis in the system’s own language from the beginning, with his signature blend deadpan absurdity and despair.