From A Buick 8 Journal #2



I'm enjoying From A Buick 8.  I do find that it takes more work to read than other King novels.  Surprisingly, the Buick has some elements of Christine.  I guess haunted cars and alien cars share similarities!  In particular, both cars  have the ability to heal themselves.  It is cool that there are first hand witnesses to the car's slow transformation. It is also interesting that both Christine and From A Buick 8 center on a teenage male.

The novel dives into police culture naturally.  I liked the line that in California police have to write "To Protect and Serve" on the police cars, while more noble Maine police just know it in their hearts.  King gives the police a personal touch, discussing how they seldom talk shop at home -- there are some things only other officers understand; things officers are not comfortable discussing with those outside the circle.

There is a lot of sci-fi here.  Purple lights, a trooper sucked into the trunk and sent. .  . somewhere.  Of course, having read 800+ pages of Under The Dome, I remind myself not to get too excited waiting for an answer as to why or how these things happen.  Why was there a Dome?  King wasn't worried about that! Why was the car left in From A Buick 8?  I'm afraid King might not be to worried about that, either!  

A little like Ray Bradbury, King is never as worried about how things work as the story surrounding them -- and even more important than the story is the characters, to King.  

2 comments:

  1. Amazon.com lists this work as "King at his most cerebral".

    As I said in the last related post, the engine powering this book is the ancient Sophistry doctrine of how we can never really know anything about life and how some things just happen for no reason. A philosophy that destroys philosophy, and one as I've also pointed out, King himself doesn't really seem to hold.

    One explanation for this book is that it was begun pre-accident. King himself said afterwards how easy it was to see the small stuff for what it was after getting within shouting distance of the pearly gates.

    Speaking to you in your professional capacity Revered, I think a key to a lot of King's fiction is this tug of war deal he's got going between the Richard Bachman side of himself. Which might be were a lot of the sophistry comes from.

    Still, presumption can go before a fall just as well as pride.

    ChrisC

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  2. Just wondering why at the end of A Buick 8, there is a list of different cities?

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