Folksy Absurdism: From a Buick 8 by Stephen King

 

From a Buick 8 is one of Stephen King's more explicit forays into science fiction, albeit with horror elements. Let's call it "folksy absurdism."

In a series of flashbacks told to the 18-year-old son of a recently-deceased Pennsylvania state trooper, we get the story of how a mysterious old Buick was abandoned at a gas station in rural Western Pennsylvania in 1979. But it's no ordinary Buick. In fact, it's not really a Buick at all, but something made to look like one with fake radio controls and everything. How did it get to the gas station? Where did the mysterious driver go?

Over the years, we don't get much of an answer, but some really weird stuff happens. The Buick sits in a state trooper garage for over 20 years (this was published in 2002, which is, improbably, 20 years ago now, but King started writing it right before his own accident in 1999). The "Buick" erupts with "light quakes." Weird otherworldly animals and plants emerge from it. Earthly things go into it. Is it a portal to another world? The todash darkness (of Dark Tower fame)? But how did it get to Western Pennsylvania?

I enjoyed the riff on absurdity (from a philosophical angle). The characters confront a mystery that they don't, and maybe can't, understand. Just like the universe itself from our human point of view. Absurdity is a deep part of the horror genre, and King himself is no stranger to stories that touch on it (this one perhaps reminds me most of Revival, but if you think about it almost all of King's fiction involves regular humans coming up against something they can't understand). 

One really interesting thing we get are hints about how the desire for narratives with beginnings, middles, and ends is itself another form of human desire against the inscrutability of existence. We are often denied such tidy things as three-act stories, lives, histories, etc. Try as we might, things often just don't make sense or fit together as we think they should. 

So maybe writing stories really is "pushing back against uncreation itself" as King says somewhere in the Dark Tower series, a task that we can never complete. So how do you write a story that says that stories never work? A bit awkward, for sure, but interesting nonetheless! Or maybe King was also working through where he was in his career and his life before and after his 1999 accident...

The characters, however, aren't as engaging as King's usually are. They're really folksy rural cops, which maybe plays differently now than it would have in 2002, and in any case, a little folksiness goes a long way for me. The characters feel sort of thin and mostly interchangeable compared to King's usual depth of characterization, which is weird because I kept thinking that this story was really more a 100-150 page novella rather than a 350 page novel (a sentiment I was happy to hear echoed in a recent podcast episode of the excellent Kingcast on this novel).

Still, this is Stephen King we're talking about. I always find something deep in his work. Snobby types  look down on him as a schlocky pop writer, but I'd wager that the depth of his work is actually a major part of his enduring appeal for many of my fellow Constant Readers. I know it is for me.

See also my Goodreads review.