From a Buick 8 and the Horror of the Unknown

 

I was going to include this in my watched and read, but decided it deserves its own post.

I finished Stephen King’s From a Buick 8 this week, which was my second time reading it. The setting of the story is Pennsylvania. It is an oral account of a Buick abandoned at a gas station by a mysterious man who randomly disappeared. “Oil’s fine!” The car is towed to a state trooper barracks (Troop D) and stored in Shed B. The story is more about atmosphere than plot. As I wrote in my last post, King does not offer much specificity about where the car came from and why strange things emerge out of it (although I like the idea of it coming from Mid-World).

There is, however, a parallel between the unexpected death of Curtis Wilcox and the mystery of the Buick. Curtis died while on duty. His teen son, Ned, likes to hang around the barracks as a way to be close to his deceased father. State trooper Sandy Dearborn, who does most of the storytelling, believes Ned is looking for answers, just as we are looking for answers that would explain the mystery of the Buick. There are no answers, and that’s where the heart of horror resides in this tale.

Horror is about shattering the order of things, which can take on various forms, such as monsters or creatures. Or as Paul Wells puts it, “In whatever way the monster is conceived and acts . . . it serves to operate as a mode of disruption and breakdown in the status quo” (9). The Buick is unknowable and defies explanation. In a way, the Buick is similar to movies like The Birds (1963) and Jaws (1975), where something unexplainable defies the laws of nature and invades the everyday.  

 

 

But that does not stop Troop D’s curiosity to know and make sense of the Buick. Sandy recounts how they took pictures and videotaped the odd things that came out of the Buick’s trunk. They even dissect a strange-looking bat, an entity that King describes as the Buick giving birth to. In short, they try to make meaning where no meaning is to be had. Even as the troopers carry on with their duties, the Buick continues to haunt them, especially Curtis, who becomes obsessed with figuring out its mystery. Is it a coincidence that the person who killed Curtis was the person who worked at the gas station when they first discovered the Buick? Or is there a direct connection between the two? The answer remains unknown.

King writes in the author’s note that he completed the first draft shortly before his accident in the summer of 1999. For that reason, I try not to look too much into the connection between the two, even though it is hard not to. I think From a Buick 8 is an amazing novel. What the story doesn’t reveal, reveals a lot.