Take a vote at any convention of Stephen King fans, and his greatest ever book is most likely The Stand. Others figuring highly might include Salem's Lot, The Dark Half and The Green Mile. His recent epic, Under the Dome is winning fans fast.
But From a Buick Eight? It probably wouldn't have too many advocates. It's not that it's a bad book – when, after all, did King ever write anything which fans of the genre found easy to put down? – but few would call it his best. So what's the big deal? Why might it be King's most important book?
The answer is that between finishing the first draft and starting the second, the author nearly got himself killed. And his recovery from the accident which nearly claimed him was arduous and painful. That the book got finished at all speaks volumes of King's commitment to his craft.
Stephen King Nearly Killed in Road Accident
After completing the first draft of From a Buick Eight in May 1999, King and his family were holidaying at their summer home in Maine during June. While out walking on Route 5, King was struck by an out-of-control van. The accident, necessitating emergency surgery, left him with a lower leg broken in nine places, a fractured hip, a chipped spine, four broken ribs and a scalp laceration requiring upward of twenty stitches.
Some five weeks after the accident, and following five significant surgical procedures, Stephen King began to write again. He first tasked himself with completing the memoir-cum-instruction manual On Writing. In this work of non-fiction he describes the accident, his rehabilitation and the agony he was in when he once again began to sit up straight in order to write.
Where does he get his Ideas?
It's also in On Writing that King introduces us to From a Buick Eight, some two years before its actual publication. In so doing, he offers up an insight into how he generates his ideas.
King describes a road trip he made from Florida to Maine, during the course of which he stopped for gas at a small filling station off the Pennsylvania turnpike. After using the men's room, he wandered out back for a close view of a nearby broiling stream. As it turned out, he got too close, slipping down the bank and narrowly avoiding falling in, from where he'd have been swept away.
It was as he drove away from the filling station that King asked himself how long his car would have sat on the forecourt, had he drowned in the stream, before someone had thought to ask where he had gone. From that question he had the genesis of From a Buick Eight, where a mysterious man in a black coat abandons an old Buick Special out front of a rural Pennsylvania gas station.
So what's the Book About?
Well, the mysterious man in a black coat is actually something much more mysterious – and much more sinister – than a mere man. And the Buick isn't really a Buick either. In truth, it's a terrifying piece of alien machinery destined to inspire wonderment and terror in consecutive generations of Pennsylvania state police.
Like all King's novels, From a Buick Eight puts good people in bad places, and hooks the audience into sticking around to find out how they escape. It also incorporates a theme found in other King stories – that of a boy becoming a man and finding out that life doesn't always hold definite answers.
From a Buick Eight will keep the reader turning pages long after they should have gone to bed at night. When the reader does retire they should, before turning out the lights, reflect that this is more than another Stephen King scary novel. It's one that exists only because King retained the sheer desire to write.
Originally published in 2002, From a Buick Eight is available in softback from New English Library, ISBN-13: 0978-03407702.
Other References
On Writing, by Stephen King, is published by Hodder & Stoughton, 2000, ISBN-0: 340-769963
Richard Cunliffe - Richard Cunliffe is a businessman and aspiring novelist. Click on his profile for the full story.
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