A couple of book-related points relating to recent book-related posts.
Quite a few of the articles about From A Buick 8 make some reference to how it ties in with King's Dark Tower series. This is a series of nine novels, none of which I've read, published between 1982 and 2012, which are more in the fantasy realm than the (mostly) real-world supernatural horror genre that King is most famous for. It's not quite as simple as that, though, as there are references to the Dark Tower universe in many other novels, sometimes clear and central to the plot (Insomnia, for instance, which I haven't read) and some retconned via references to books published before the first Dark Tower novel, The Gunslinger, was published in 1982, for instance The Shining and The Stand. This page on King's own website lists the places where other non-core Dark Tower novels refer to events in the Dark Tower series, or where Dark Tower novels reference people or occurrences in other works. Those works include From A Buick 8, as it happens, and I quote (from that page):
The Buick 8’s previous owner was most likely a low man and the car a portal to the todash spaces from which creatures escape.
I have literally no idea what any of that means, and there is a sense in which it doesn't matter in terms of enjoying the novel as a stand-alone work. There is also a sense, though, in which not being familiar with the wider universe leaves a slight gap in the reader's understanding of the car's origin and its previous custodian.
I'm going to come out here and say I do not love this, and would prefer it if the novels could just be novels without having to tie in to some wider universe which you're expected to know about. I recall being a bit vexed when the episodes of The X-Files changed from being one-off weird monster things you could just dip into at will to pieces in some giant conspiracy theory jigsaw to which you were required to bring some background knowledge (like who the constantly chain-smoking dude was). Part of this is that, as much as I love Stephen King's books, I have no intention of committing to read any of the Dark Tower books, partly because ploughing through the whole series is a major commitment that I'm not inclined to make and partly because it's further into the realm of fantasy than I really like, that being a genre I have a limited appetite for.
Secondly, among the bits of promotional blurb on the back of my copy of Jack Maggs is the following review snippet from the Evening Standard:
I can see what they were probably trying to convey here - the reader will be reading so compulsively fast that they may fly out of control in some way analogous to losing control of a car - but, depending how childish you are, it's hard to avoid other interpretations.


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