| From a Buick 8 | |
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 First edition cover |
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| Author | Stephen King |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Horror novel |
| Publisher | Scribner |
| Publication date | September 24, 2002 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 356 |
| ISBN | 0743228472 |
| Preceded by | Black House |
| Followed by | The Colorado Kid |
From a Buick 8 is a novel by horror writer Stephen King. Published on September 24, 2002, this is the second novel by Stephen King to feature a supernatural car (the first one being Christine, which like this novel is set in Western Pennsylvania). According to the book sleeve: "From a Buick 8 is a novel about our fascination with deadly things, about our insistence on answers when there are none, about terror and courage in the face of the unknowable." The title comes from Bob Dylan's song "From a Buick 6", and is also clearly an homage to H.P. Lovecraft's short story "From Beyond", with which the novel shares thematic and plot elements. Award winning independent publisher Cemetery Dance Publications published a signed Limited Edition of the book which sold for $500 or more on eBay.
Stephen King says that he was inspired to write this book on a car trip he took in 1999. During the trip he stopped at a gas station in Western Pennsylvania. While looking around he slipped and almost fell into a stream of water. The thought that he might not have been discovered until a much later time led him to the plot of the story. In the novel King describes a fatal automobile accident, and coincidentally King himself was the victim of a bad accident that almost killed him late in 1999. However, he said that he did not change any of the details in the novel to match his accident.
Contents |
The novel is a series of recollections by the members of Troop D, a state police barracks in Western Pennsylvania. After Curtis Wilcox, a well-liked member of Troop D, is killed by a drunk driver, his son Ned begins to visit Troop D. The cops, the dispatcher and the custodian quickly take a liking to him, and soon begin telling him about the "Buick 8" of the title. It is in some sense a ghost story in the way that the novel is about a group of people telling an old but unsettling tale. And while the Buick 8 is not a traditional ghost, it is indeed not of their world.
The Buick 8 resembles a vintage 1954 Buick Roadmaster, and was left at a gas station by a mysterious man dressed in black, who disappeared soon after leaving the car to be refueled. The car is later held by the Troop D police of rural Pennsylvania in storage shed B. The car, they discover, is not a car at all. It appears to be a Buick Roadmaster, but the steering wheel is immobile, the dashboard instruments are useless props, the engine has no moving parts and ignition wires that go nowhere, the car heals itself when scratched or dented, and all dirt and debris are repelled by it.
Sandy Dearborn, now Sergeant Commanding of Troop D, is the main narrator of the book, and tells the story to Ned, discussing various things that have happened with the car, and his father's fascination with it. The car will frequently give off what they dub "lightquakes," or large flashes of purple light over an extended period of time, and will occasionally "give birth" to strange plants and creatures that aren't anything like what they've seen in their world. Two people have disappeared in the vicinity of the car—Curtis Wilcox's former partner Ennis Rafferty, and an escaped lowlife named Brian Lippy they picked up for drunk driving and being under the influence of angel dust. It is later suggested in the book that perhaps the Buick was a portal, between our world and another.
After hearing the story of the Buick and how it has been kept secret by Troop D for so long, Ned becomes convinced that the car was somehow related to the death of his father in a seemingly random road accident. After all, the gas station attendant who first reported the Buick sitting in front of the station was the same man who, years later, would kill his father. Ned is determined to destroy the Buick, but before he can Sandy Dearborn realizes that the Buick, in fact, wants to take Ned into the world it connects to ours.
Sandy returns to the shed to find Ned sitting in it, Ned having poured gasoline under the car and holding a pistol and a match. Just as Sandy pulls Ned out, the Buick transforms into a portal, trying to draw both Ned and Sandy inside of it. The rest of the staff arrive on the feeling something bad may happen, all of them helping recall the story of the Buick's origin at their station, and manage to pull Ned and Sandy free, but not before Sandy glimpses into the world on the other side of the Buick. He sees Lippy's Swastika necklace and cowboy boot, along with Ennis's Stetson and Ruger.
The book closes with Ned joining the police force after dropping out of college, and he pulls Sandy over to shed B. The Buick's window is cracked, and remains cracked without healing itself. Ned believes that the Buick will one day fall apart, having expended the last of its energy in that final attempt to draw him over to the other universe.
The main theme of the book is that there will always be things in this world that we will never fully understand. The most obvious example of this is the Buick itself. The reader never learns its origin, any reason for its existence in the "normal" world, nor the identity of the mysterious man who abandoned it. In the text, Sandy likens it to God — no one will ever know His plans, no one can ever make sense of them. Ned becomes frustrated as he learns the tale, as he wants explanations, and Sandy explains to him and to us in the narrative that there are no answers when it comes to the Buick. Even Curt Wilcox, Ned's Father who was so fascinated with the Buick, comes to give up on trying to pry the answers from it.
Another theme is the passage of legacy from father to son. Curt latches onto the Buick in a way that none of the other Troopers do. He focuses on it, tries to learn from it. His son Ned feels the same, which is why he makes the attempt to destroy it. When Ned reveals that he believes that the Buick will one day fall apart, Sandy comments that Ned looks truly happy to him for the first time. What the father started, the son finished.
Although Buick 8 is a self-contained story, the novel is widely considered to be part of King's Dark Tower mythos. Cars similar to the Buick are described in The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah and The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower as well as the Hearts in Atlantis short story "Low Men In Yellow Coats" as belonging to the Can-toi (or "Low Men"), and the creatures that emanate from the car are similar in description to both the creatures in The Mist (also part of the Dark Tower mythos) and the "todash monsters" described in the later books of the Dark Tower series.
The main narrator of the book Sandy Dearborn shares the last name "Dearborn" with an alias used by Roland Deschain. As a young man in the province of Hambry, he was known as Will Dearborn (The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass).
As of 2009, a movie adaptation of the book is in development. It was originally to be directed by George A. Romero but is currently being directed by Tobe Hooper, who also directed two other Stephen King adaptations, Salem's Lot and The Mangler. The screenplay is written by Richard Chizmar, founder of Cemetery Dance Publications, and Johnathon Schaech. Chesapeake Films is set to release it as their first production. The script was rewritten Jan and Feb 2009 with planning to shoot by Summer 2009. Chesapeake Films is aiming for a late 2009/early 2010 release.[1]
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   | Pictures of the Limited Edition of From A Buick 8 - Stephen King: From a Buick 8 |
| | Cemetery Dance Official Site - Cemetery Dance Publications |
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