Many novelists write out of pain, but very few of them can pinpoint the pain the way Peter Gent can. It is in his lower back. It has been there since 1967, when a linebacker named Vince Costello, who played for the New York Giants, put it there. Costello drove a knee into Gent, who was then a wide receiver for the Dallas Cowboys, and the knee ruined several ribs and ravaged the surrounding territory. Two years later, Gent stopped playing professional football, but the pain has persisted. It is reflected on nearly every page of "North Dallas Forty."

The central characters are pro football players, men who are paid to inflict pain and to absorb pain, in varying degrees, depending to an extent on whether they happen to be X's or O's. The peripheral characters are the people who own, coach, counsel and live off X's and O's, including their fans and their women; these people are not necessarily paid to inflict pain, but many of them do, free. The wounds they cause fester longer than mere physical bruises.

One of the many remarkable things about this novel is that, despite its concern with pain and with the pills that kill pain, it is a very funny book. It is not burlesque funny, like "Semi-Tough." It is truth funny….

Gent builds a strong case against professional football. Other ex-pros have sought to indict their game, most notably Dave Meggyesy in "Out of Their League." But Meggyesy's arguments suffered because he was too shrill, too preachy, too much the predictable convert, the fanatic who had shot from one extreme to the opposite. Gent is a tightly controlled fanatic. He has written his own book, and in his use of language and in his meticulously constructed plot, he has demonstrated that he is a far better writer than he ever was a pass-catcher…. He proves his case without preaching, without sermonizing, almost without judging. He balances shock with humor, irony with warmth, detail with insight, and ends up with a book that easily transcends its subject matter….

[The book] reaches a peak in its final chapter, the day after the game. The final 50 or 60 pages, none of which takes place on a football field, are the most powerful. The ending, considering the signposts Gent has set along the way, is inevitable, and its impact is devastating. Reading the last few pages is like being kicked in the groin—or kneed by a linebacker.