From a Buick 8 (2002)

Look in the tunk.

A Buick, a beauty of a car

But then, there have always been two sorts of people in the world. Curt was of the sort who believed satisfaction actually did bring felines back from the other side of the great divide.

Stephen King, From a Buick 8

Prior to reading this book, this was one I was aware of but one that I had heard had not the greatest reputation. As such, it was not necessarily one I was looking forward to, especially with the Dark Tower itself in sight. But I was pleasantly surprised and charmed by the book. Yes, it is linked ever so slightly with the Dark Tower series, but in a way that is very easy to miss. It doesn’t effect your enjoyment of it at all, and in fact, it’s tiny connection to the Tower speaks to the central idea of life in the face of the unknown.

I’ve outlined below in more detail the links with the Tower, but it doesn’t take away from the central interpretive utility of the Buick at the story’s core. King has written about spooky cars more times than most writers even think about, the most obvious one being Christine. It’s easy to mock him for doing so, but in having read them all now it’s interesting to see how they can play out with different meanings or purposes, sometimes within the same story. Trucks invited many interpretations, where Uncle Otto’s Truck is more simply a revenge story. Christine has a dark sexual power contained within, but the Buick of this story most closely resembles that of death.

King had started writing this story before his accident (it was mentioned a few times as in progress in On Writing), but the the Buick is a delivery method of death. The accident described in the story is coloured with details King had acute experiences, but the very fact that the car itself delivers death from it’s diabolical trunk makes it impossible not to draw some kind of link between King and his accident, even if it is only the lightest of touches. It sits in the story, within Shed B, as some great unknowable thing the characters try, and fail, to comprehend fully. Sandy Dearborn’s near death experience gives him the briefest of glimpses of the great beyond, but barely the framework with which to understand it.

It’s a very interesting choice for King to do that. It borders on Lovecraft. similar to Crouch End of The Mist before it. In his stories, King will invent long and complex histories for not just his characters, but the thing that they face in the story. This is not a criticism by the way. The history of the Overlook in The Shining or the arrival of Pennywise in It (as well as all those interludes) give those stories weight, both literally and metaphorically. Sometimes the history is the accumulation of many stories, like Flagg’s since his introduction in The Stand. Yet King, apart from subtle hints for fans, refuses at all to offer any true explanation for the story he is telling. The Buick just is. It is a fact of the world.

I understand that for some readers this may prove frustrating. King rarely indulges in deliberate obtuseness, preferring plain speaking and clarity, But with From a Buick 8, the whole point of it is that there are things that are incomprehensible, but life still continues for most everyone. Without that lack of explanation, Ned Wilcox would learn something about something, as opposed to something from nothing.

King’s efforts in the book is to draw equivalence between death, the undiscovered country, and the Buick, to make death strange again. Ned’s father died in a drink driving accident, an insensible way to die. Ned as a young man just wants to make sense of why Dad isn’t at home anymore. The Buick, his father’s obsession before him, perhaps can give him some clue as to why, and his frustration grows as the answers never seem to come. Sandy as well as the other cops are at greats pains to explain what can’t be explained, that sometimes life is just an unknowable series of events where trying to find a reason is a fool’s game. This can be a criticism levelled at the book, but to do so I think misses the fundamental point.

The book even outright says not to expect a neat ending. King is often criticised for his endings (though Secret Window, Secret Garden aside, I’m usually okay with them), and highlighting this aspect almost makes its lack of ending immune to criticism. Shit happens, and death has unknowable edges. The only guarantee is that it happens. Once you notice that every time a minor cop gets introduced, only to be killed off a couple lines later, it becomes clear the point that King is driving home.

The book is good, but doesn’t quite deliver on the emotional promise of its concept. Cops have to deal with death semi-regularly, that they become inured to it. It confirms the themes of the book, that the unknowable is something you have to live with, but we rarely get an insight into Ned’s feelings except through the lens of Sandy’s observations. It might have given the final ‘attack’ from the Buick a bit more heft had we got inside Ned’s head a bit more. Like I say, the ending is almost immune to criticism. I wouldn’t put it as a top tier King, but it’s certainly better than some of the stories of his I’ve read. But overall, it’s an enjoyable yarn well told, that has some things to say about death, grief, and all the days they stay dead.

Observations and Connections

This is technically related to the Dark Tower, but only in the most tangential way. If you have no knowledge of the world of the Tower, then you aren’t going to be lost in references as you would be reading Black House, for example. For a Constant Reader, there are some fun links to be made.

The Buick itself is a car for a can-toi, aka Low Man. The Low Men and their cars first appeared in Hearts in Atlantis, and the cars themselves are made out to be just as dangerous as those that ‘drive’ them. I speculated in the Hearts in Atlantis essay that the titular Christine may have once been a Low Car, and though the description of the Buick doesn’t exactly match, there are elements (the self-repair of each car, both stories are set in Pennsylvania) that at least makes a link plausible. That Christine serves to help Pennywise in It by transporting Henry Bowers makes sense, as the Beam Guardian and Pennywise’s enemy is the Turtle, which aligns with the Crimson King’s schemes. In fact, any odd car in a King story may have been one abandoned by a Low Man, such as Uncle Otto’s Truck or Mrs’s Todd’s Shortcut. Maybe in one universe the Low Cars spread like a virus to all cars, which leads to the events of Trucks?

Speaking of Low Men, the driver who disappears from the story is almost certainly a Low Man. He’s described as dressing in a black coat as opposed to yellow, which has lead some to speculate this may be another incarnation of Randall Flagg. I think this connection is unlikely.

The creatures that come from the Buick are very much like those described in The Mist, suggesting that the Buick has a universal portal, similar to the other ways we’ve seen travel between different universes in numerous other books. In addition, the creatures tend not to do well in our world, perhaps meaning the mist creates an atmosphere conducive to their being alive. The world we glimpse is like nothing we’ve seen before in King’s descriptions, except maybe Altair IV from The Tommyknockers.

The main character is called Sandy Dearborn, matching Roland’s alias Will Dearborn that he uses in The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass. Similarly, there is a book mentioned written by John H. Maturin, Maturin being the name of the Turtle that appears in It as well as being one of the Beam Guardians of the Tower. I think both are simply easter eggs, alerting the keen reader to the Dark Tower connections.

The title of the novel comes from a Bob Dylan song called From a Buick 6.

UP NEXT: After a long gap, it’s a sprint to the Tower beginning with Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla