From a Buick 8
Encyclopedia
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.
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.
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 1953 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.
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.
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).
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 WAS aiming for a late 2009/early 2010 release, but due to production problems, the film is on hold
.
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
by horror
Horror fiction
Horror fiction also Horror fantasy is a philosophy of literature, which is intended to, or has the capacity to frighten its readers, inducing feelings of horror and terror. It creates an eerie atmosphere. Horror can be either supernatural or non-supernatural...
writer Stephen King
Stephen King
Stephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books...
. 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
Western Pennsylvania
Western Pennsylvania consists of the western third of the state of Pennsylvania in the United States. Pittsburgh is the largest city in the region, with a metropolitan area population of about 2.4 million people, and serves as its economic and cultural center. Erie, Altoona, and Johnstown are its...
). 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
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
's song "From a Buick 6
From a Buick 6
"From a Buick 6" is a song by Bob Dylan from his album Highway 61 Revisited, which was also released as a single on the B-side of Positively 4th Street...
", and is also clearly an homage to H.P. Lovecraft's short story "From Beyond
From Beyond (short story)
"From Beyond" is a short story by science fiction and horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft. It was written in 1920 and was first published in The Fantasy Fan in June 1934 .-Synopsis:...
", with which the novel shares thematic and plot elements.
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.
Plot summary
The novel is a series of recollections by the members of Troop D, a state policePennsylvania State Police
The Pennsylvania State Police is the state police force of Pennsylvania, responsible for statewide law enforcement. It was founded in 1905 by order of Governor Samuel Pennypacker, in response to the private police forces used by mine and mill owners to stop worker strikes and the inability or...
barracks
Barracks
Barracks are specialised buildings for permanent military accommodation; the word may apply to separate housing blocks or to complete complexes. Their main object is to separate soldiers from the civilian population and reinforce discipline, training and esprit de corps. They were sometimes called...
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
Ghost story
A ghost story may be any piece of fiction, or drama, or an account of an experience, that includes a ghost, or simply takes as a premise the possibility of ghosts or characters' belief in them. Colloquially, the term can refer to any kind of scary story. In a narrower sense, the ghost story has...
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 1953 Buick Roadmaster
Buick Roadmaster
The Roadmaster was an automobile built by the Buick division of General Motors. Roadmasters produced between 1936 and 1958 were built on Buick's longest non-limousine wheelbase and shared their basic structure with senior Oldsmobiles. Between 1946 and 1957 the Roadmaster was Buick's top of the line...
, 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
Driving under the influence
Driving under the influence is the act of driving a motor vehicle with blood levels of alcohol in excess of a legal limit...
and being under the influence of angel dust
Phencyclidine
Phencyclidine , commonly initialized as PCP and known colloquially as angel dust, is a recreational dissociative drug...
. 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
Swastika
The swastika is an equilateral cross with its arms bent at right angles, in either right-facing form in counter clock motion or its mirrored left-facing form in clock motion. Earliest archaeological evidence of swastika-shaped ornaments dates back to the Indus Valley Civilization of Ancient...
necklace and cowboy boot, along with Ennis's Stetson
Stetson
Stetsons are the brand of hat manufactured by the John B. Stetson Company of St. Joseph, Missouri.Stetson eventually became the world’s largest hat maker, producing over 3.3 million hats a year in a factory spread over . Today Stetson remains a family-owned concern...
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.
Major themes
The main themeTheme (literature)
A theme is a broad, message, or moral of a story. The message may be about life, society, or human nature. Themes often explore timeless and universal ideas and are almost always implied rather than stated explicitly. Along with plot, character,...
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
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
— 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.
Connection to The Dark Tower
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 AtlantisHearts in Atlantis
Hearts in Atlantis is a collection of two novellas and three short stories by Stephen King, all connected to one another by recurring characters and taking place in roughly chronological order....
short story "Low Men In Yellow Coats" as belonging to the Can-toi
Can-toi
The Can-Toi are fictional creatures from Stephen King's Dark Tower series and related works. They are unofficially but more commonly known as low men, as in Low Men in Yellow Coats due to their often garish yellow clothing...
(or "Low Men"), and the creatures that emanate from the car are similar in description to both the creatures in The Mist
The Mist
The Mist is a horror novella by the American author Stephen King, in which the small town of Bridgton, Maine is suddenly enveloped in an unnatural mist that conceals otherworldly monsters. It was first published as the first and longest story of the 1980 horror anthology Dark Forces. A slightly...
(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
Roland Deschain
Roland Deschain of Gilead is a fictional character, the protagonist and antihero of Stephen King's The Dark Tower series. He is the son of Steven and Gabrielle Deschain and is descended from a long line of "gunslingers", peacekeepers and diplomats of Roland's society...
. As a young man in the province of Hambry, he was known as Will Dearborn (The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass).
Film adaptation
As of 2009, a movie adaptation of the book is in development. It was originally to be directed by George A. RomeroGeorge A. Romero
George Andrew Romero is a Canadian-American film director, screenwriter and editor, best known for his gruesome and satirical horror films about a hypothetical zombie apocalypse. He is nicknamed "Godfather of all Zombies." -Life and career:...
but is currently being directed by Tobe Hooper
Tobe Hooper
Tobe Hooper is an American film director and screenwriter, best known for his work in the horror film genre. His works include the cult classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre , along with its first sequel, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 ; the three-time Emmy-nominated Stephen King film adaptation...
, who also directed two other Stephen King adaptations, Salem's Lot and The Mangler
The Mangler
"The Mangler" is a short story by Stephen King, first published in the December 1972 issue of Cavalier magazine, and later collected in King's 1978 collection Night Shift.-Setting:...
. The screenplay is written by Richard Chizmar
Richard Chizmar
Richard Thomas Chizmar is best known as the publisher and editor of Cemetery Dance magazine and the owner of Cemetery Dance Publications...
, founder of Cemetery Dance Publications
Cemetery Dance Publications
Cemetery Dance Publications is a specialty press publisher of horror and dark suspense. Cemetery Dance was founded by Richard Chizmar, a horror author, while he was in college. It is associated with Cemetery Dance magazine, which was founded in 1988. They began to publish books in 1992.Cemetery...
, and Johnathon Schaech
Johnathon Schaech
Johnathon Schaech is an American actor, writer, and director.-Early life:Schaech was born in Edgewood, Maryland to Joseph, a Baltimore City law enforcement officer, and Joanne Schaech, a human resources executive. He is of German and Italian descent, and was raised Roman Catholic...
. Chesapeake Films
Chesapeake Films
Chesapeake Films is a film company founded by Richard Chizmar and Johnathon Schaech. Their first projects include an adaptation of Stephen King's From A Buick 8, Douglas Clegg's The Hour Before Dark, Stephen King's Black House, Ed Gorman's The Poker Club, and Road House 2: Last Call....
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 WAS aiming for a late 2009/early 2010 release, but due to production problems, the film is on hold
Development hell
In the jargon of the media-industry, "development hell" is a period during which a film or other project is trapped in development...
.
External links
- From a Buick 8 at StephenKing.com