Book Review : Brian Allen Carr - Bad Foundations (2023)
People who have never done manual labor or construction are delusional about what is achievable. They mix up thoughts and actions. They think thinking a thing through—and having a thing make sense in your mind—means that you can translate that sense into reality. You absolutely cannot.
There is theory. There is practice. (p.69)
I was born in a small town where people work with their hands. There was little place for a pop culture nerd out there, but it doesn't mean there wasn't any poetry. Of course, locals always fawned over the harsh beauty of the territory and whatnot, but there's more to working class communities that cold air, mountains or whatever. There's a poetry to how people find poetry in their lives when they don't read Neruda if that makes sense. I found such poetry in Brian Allen Carr's latest novel Bad Foundations.
Bad Foundations tells the story of Cook, a man who earns a living as a crawlspace inspector for a home foundation company. It's an ugly and demanding living, but Cook doesn't see it in these terms. Along with his coworkers Cowboy Dan, Germ, Kipler and his boss Mortimer, Cook sees crawlspaces and home foundations as a reflection of subconscious, generational trauma and how people have been living their lives. Inhaling legal weed through his vape pen, he mainlines the most important truths of the universe while trying to keep a relationship to his wife and daughters.
Home As A Metaphor
This was a somewhat brainy, but sweet and unpretentious novel. I have no idea who outside of literary nerds from working class backgrounds like me will see this on the shelves and think : "man, I totally get it. This looks fun." But I have to be the exact target audience for something, right? The cornerstone of Bad Foundations is an idea I've became somewhat enamored with over the last couple month: a professional look at something we're all inextricably emotional about. In this case here: home.
Not only a house is supposed to be a refuge from the outside world where you're supposed to be yourself, but it's also a reflection of who you are as a person. If your life messy, it's going to be a dirty an unwelcoming place. If you suffer from fragile mental health, it's going to fall into obsolescence and start breaking down. You get the point. But what makes Cook such a fun and charming character is that he's not a white knight saving bad homeowner. He just reads the writing on the walls, sells repairs and leaves.
Because Cook is busy taking care of his own crawlspace while work is taking him away from home. That's the Rubicon Bad Foundations crossed from being "cute, but really predictable", to a quite fun novel. Half of the book consists in Cook trying to find meaning in his relationship to his daughter and to keep his life together while he's constantly pulled away by circumstances. The crawlspace is used as an allegory for a person's subconscious in Bad Foundations and this is why Cook is always there.
Like, my laser has one job: to show me where things used to be. But can it maybe show me other old information? I know a guy who says a laser can show you ghosts, but I’ve only even seen dust. But if you have to look at something to see it, can you look things into place? Like, can your awareness of information change the information before you’ve even been informed by it? (p. 86)
Why should I read it?
Well, this is a proper question. It brings me to what I believe to be Bad Foundations only problem: it's a patchwork of great ideas that just feel a little less great when they're put together. I didn't want Cook perusing the local cemetery and shooting the shit with his daughter right after he dropped life altering wisdom on a crawlspace job. Both worked on their own, but together it felt like different novels set in various eras of Cook's existence. It lacks a master idea that transcends all the chapters.
But I still do think you should read Bad Foundations and I know why: it's a book about how fucking weird and disjointed it feels to be a millennial who's adulting in the twenty-first century. That having to balance financial survival, parenthood and that weird feeling that we were born special and privy to the secret truths of the universe is a balancing act that can get you in trouble in more ways than not. Cook is never comfortable at doing anything, but he does it anyway because like demands it out of him.
He's doing his best and manages not to fuck up the important stuff even if he does all the time. Because part of being a successful adult involved surrounding yourself with people who get that. Who get you. It's somewhat of a comfort read for millennial grownups.
*
Bad Foundations was my first Brian Allen Carr novel. I've seen his name around for over a decade, but never quite got to him. He's more of a crafty, forward thinking storyteller than a stylist, but he doesn't sound like anybody else and it's the most you can ask out of a writer. Bad Foundations is mystical, but unassuming. Quirky, but rugged in a way quirky novels usually aren't. It's the writing of a man who does more than just writing to earn his keep. It's the writing of a man who has seen real world poetry.
