End Zone

End Zone is less a novel than a series of very funny scenes about football players living in the atomic age (and speaking in the vocabulary of war). Nonetheless, the book shines in its portrayal of the modern American university that awkwardly mixes education with a fanatical devotion to sports. I also liked this paragraph:

Most lives are guided by clichés. They have a soothing effect on the mind and they express the kind of widely accepted sentiment that, when peeled back, is seen to be a denial of silence. Their menace is hidden with the darker crimes of thought and language. In the face of death, this menace vanishes altogether. Death is the best soil for cliché. The trite saying is never more comforting, more restful, as in times of mourning. Flowers are set about the room; we stand very close to walls, uttering the lush banalities.

Recommended.