Stephen King

[McCoy]

That's a great story, McCoy.

As you can see, the entire experience made quite an impression on me. I'll probably still remember it into my Alzheimer's.

 

[theenglish]

See, the only King books I've read are the first two Dark Towers, On Writing and From a Buick 8. I've seen complaints about the lack of explanation in the latter before, and I don't get it. I mean, it's the entire point of the book. The boy is dealing with his father's death, not understanding why it had to happen. And there's this crazy car that his dad used to be obsessed with figuring out the mystery of, but there is no explanation. Sometimes things just happen where we never find out the why. If the book had explained where the car came from or why it did what it did, then the book would be just another horror story about a creepy car. I like that King actually tackled the theme of the unexplanable experiences of human life. Maybe it's not as good as some of his other books...I can't really speak to that.

Yeah, I can appreciate that. The story is told from the point of view of a bunch of people who looked after the buick and experienced weird things as a result - for one of them to find out what it all meant would have seemed forced and unnecessary. King has said in interviews in the past that he doesn't like explaining things too much, and any explanation he could come up with for what was going on in Buick 8 would fall flat. But I would loved to have seen the mysterious "driver" come back at some point in the story.

In the context of reading Buick 8 as a stand alone novel, there is not much explanation, but if you link it to The Dark Tower and treat the Buick as a connection to Roland's world (I like to think it opens up into that horrible, monstrous valley they ride over when they are trapped in Blane the Mono) then it makes more sense.

I read King when I was younger and then avoided him throughout the late eighties and nineties but I recently read Buick 8 and the Dark Tower series and really enjoyed them, so I think I will go back to some of the works I have missed over the years.