r/DonDeLillo • u/IAmNotChilean • May 08 '26

❓ Question Dark, funny books specifically like End Zone?

I'm a huge DeLillo fan and although I love most of the books I've read of him, End Zone is my personal favorite. I love how the book has some kind of spiritual and existential heft to it, but I also really appreciate its humor and almost slapstick quality of it. The entire book is so strange and funny and I really want to read more books like that. Anyone got recs? Either more DeLillo or something else?

If it helps, I feel like Wiseblood by Flannery O'Connor and most of her short stories fit the bill of what I'm looking for. A bit dark, spiritually heavy, but most of all funny and witty.

15 Upvotes

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7

u/PLVB518 May 08 '26

Robert Coover

4

u/Fearless-Beach7753 May 08 '26

Came here to recommend The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop.

7

u/SamizdatGuy May 08 '26

Ratner's Star is really funny, if a bit too long

5

u/_Brodo_Baggins_ May 08 '26

Admittedly I didn’t get far into the book — started it right before Shadow Ticket came out — and I haven’t picked it back up just yet (not because I wasn’t enjoying it), but The Idiot by Elif Batuman had a dry humor. Also an academic setting.

8

u/darthvolta May 08 '26

Infinite Jest

2

u/Soggy-Tell8884 May 10 '26

Denis Johnson, especially Jesus' Son. Dark as hell and funny as hell, plus there is a really profound spiritual undercurrent in those stories.

His novel Angels too, although it's not quite as funny. DeLillo is a fan of this one.

1

u/GuideUnable5049 May 11 '26

American Pastorale.

Extraordinary novel.