book exploder

In Megha Majumdar’s new novel “A Guardian and a Thief,” a cataclysmic climate event in the Bengali city of Kolkata has wiped out shelter and food supplies, leaving its citizens desperate and scrambling for survival. Among the families beset by the tragedy are Ma, her young daughter Mishti and Ma’s father Dadu. They are some of the fortunate ones, with approved passports to travel to the U.S., where Ma’s husband awaits them in Ann Arbor, Mich. But a brazen theft threatens their very existence.

“A Guardian and a Thief” is Majumdar’s follow-up to her critically acclaimed bestselling debut “A Burning.” We chatted with the author about white lies, the pleasures of anthropology and teaching as a form of learning.

(Please note: The Times may earn a commission through links to Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.)

✍️ Author Chat

“A Guardian and a Thief” by Megha Majumdar

(Knopf)

Your novel takes place in Kolkata, which is your hometown. Why?

It’s one of the cities in the world which is most severely affected by climate change. I was reading about all of these grim predictions. Kolkata has grown significantly hotter and is predicted to endure more storms in the coming decades. Reading all of that was really sad, and it was really alarming. The book really grew out of these predictions about the future of the city.

Your character Boomba makes life very difficult for your family, yet he is really a victim of circumstance, right? Calamities can make good people do bad things.

This is the kind of question that got me into this book, which is, are there good people and monsters or do we contain elements of both in us? And is this revealed in a circumstance of scarcity and crisis? That’s the kind of question that I was very interested in. Boomba came to me initially as the thief of the title, but as I started writing more about him, I realized that it wouldn’t be truthful or interesting to simply make him the thief. He was more complex and I needed to write him with all of his complicated motivations and wishes and worries and regrets.

Everyone in the novel lies to some extent, whether it’s for self-preservation, or to protect their loved ones from being hurt.

I think it’s coming from love, actually, the loving function of lies and falsehoods. Anybody who has lived far away from home might find that this resonates with them: This feeling that when you are really far away from your loved ones, you need to assure them that you are OK, that things are all right. It’s a kind of love that you can offer them, because they cannot do anything to help you from so far away. So offering them falsehoods about how your circumstances are fine and they have nothing to worry about is an expression of love for them.

You studied anthropology in college. How did you move into fiction?

Anthropology is about the effort to understand [other people] while acknowledging that you can never fully know, that there are limits to how much any of us can understand another person’s life. That training, in listening for complexity in somebody else’s life story, and honoring the contradictions and intricacies of their life, and maintaining the humility to acknowledge that there are things about other people which will always remain mysterious to us — that space is so rich for a fiction writer.

You teach writing in the MFA program at Hunter College in New York. How does that feed into your work?

It’s what I loved about working as a book editor. Teaching feels beautifully related to editorial work, because, once again, I am close to other writers. I’m close to their text, I am thinking with them through the questions of what this text is accomplishing. And I love having the opportunity to think through failures of prose with other incredibly smart and creative and ambitious writers. When I say failure, there’s nothing bad or stressful about it. I fail in my writing all the time. Failure is part of the process. Being able to look at those failures and ask, what is happening here is very useful.

📰 The Week(s) in Books

Twenty-five years after “Almost Famous” put his origin story on movie screens, Cameron Crowe (left, with Robert Plant) reflects on his roots as a teenage music journalist.

(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

Valorie Castellanos Clark writes that “The Radical Fund,” John Fabian Witt’s book about a Jazz Age millionaire who gave his money away is a “meticulous” story of “the ways a modest fund endowed by a reluctant heir managed to reshape American civil rights in less than 20 years.”

Nine years after “Go Set a Watchman” published, Robert Allen Papinchak reviews Harper Lee’s latest, “The Land of Sweet Forever,” a collection of stories and essays from the late author, calling it “a rewarding addition and resource to the slim canon of her literary legacy.”

Leigh Haber is entranced with Gish Jen’s new novel “Bad Bad Girl,” about a fraught mother-daughter relationship, calling the book “suffused with love and a desire to finally understand.”

Finally, Mikael Wood chatted with filmmaker Cameron Crowe about his new memoir, “The Uncool.” Says Crowe of his journalism days, “I did an interview with Bob Dylan for Los Angeles magazine, and I got it so wrong that they didn’t publish it.”

📖 Bookstore Faves

Vroman’s Bookstore is on Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

Nine months after the Eaton fire, Vroman’s Bookstore continues to be a cherished haven for local residents. The store still vibrates with bookish energy as it continues its ambitious fundraising outreach campaigns for fire victims. We chatted with the store’s chief executive, Julia Cowlishaw, about how things are going at the beloved Pasadena institution.

Nine months after the fire, how is business?

Business has been steady this year and we’re pleased with that, given all the variables in the world.

What books are selling right now?

The new releases this fall are fabulous, and we are seeing a broad range of interests. In nonfiction there’s a lot of interest in trying to understand current events from historical perspectives and Jill Lepore’s “We the People” is one example on our bestseller list. Since it is fall, the list of cookbooks is amazing and Samin Nosrat’s new cookbook “Good Things” along with her older book “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat” make great gifts. In fiction, Ian McEwan, Kiran Desai, Thomas Pynchon and Lily King’s new novels are popular, so literary fiction is alive and well.

How important has the store been for the community in such a challenging year?

Bookstores, including Vroman’s, have long been recognized as a third place in their communities. A third place gives people a space to come together with friends and family over a shared interest and a fine sense of community. That sense of community became even more important after the fires, and it was so important for us to be more than a bookstore and give back to our community in every way we could. Our community really responded by helping us raise money for several community foundations, and collect books and supplies for people impacted by the fires.

Vroman’s Bookstore is at 695 E. Colorado Blvd. in Pasadena.

When it was first published in 1975, “Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ‘n’ Roll Music” was immediately recognized as something new. In six taut, probing, far-ranging essays about certain popular or otherwise forgotten musicians, author Greil Marcus cracked open a world of sojourners, tricksters, killers and confidence men — the lost subterranean underlife of America as inflected in the music itself.

“Mystery Train” was a landmark in cultural criticism that took on Rock ‘n’ Roll as a subject of intellectual inquiry. In 2011, Time magazine named “Mystery Train” one of the 100 greatest nonfiction books of all time. For the book’s 50th anniversary, a new edition has been published, with a wealth of new writing from Marcus that brings his book up to date.

On a recent Zoom call, I chatted with him on the 50th anniversary of his book about its lasting impact, the anxiety of influence and the staying power of criticism.

(Please note: The Times may earn a commission through links to Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.)

✍️ Author Chat

Book jacket of “Mystery Train” by Greil Marcus.

(Penguin Random House)

Congrats on 50 years of “Mystery Train.” Could you have possibly imagined that it would still have a life in 2025 when you wrote it in 1975?

For this book to have this kind of a life, you can’t predict it. I had a miserable time writing it. I’d never written a book before. I rented a room at a house near our little apartment, and just stayed there all day, trying to write or not trying to write, as the case may be. I didn’t have any hopes or ambitions for it. I just wanted it to look good.

This is the thickest edition of “Mystery Train” yet. Your “Notes and Discographies” section, where you update the reader on new books and recordings about the artists, among other things, is longer than the original text of the book.

That’s what’s kept the book alive. I mean, I still think the original chapters read well. I’m glad they came out the way they did, but for me, they opened up a continuing story, and that has sort of kept me on the beat so that I obsessively would follow every permutation that I could and write them in the notes section.

“Mystery Train” changed the way popular music was written about. Who were your literary antecedents?

Edmund Wilson, Pauline Kael, D.H. Lawrence’s critical studies. Hemingway’s short stories, just as a way to learn how to try to write. There was another book that was important to me, Michael Gray’s “Song and Dance Man,” which was a rigorous examination of Bob Dylan’s music. It was totally intimidating. His knowledge of blues, novels, poetry — I thought there’s no way I can write something as good as this. So I started doing a lot more reading, and listening more widely.

For many readers of the book, it was the first time they came across artists like Robert Johnson or Harmonica Frank. How did you discover these artists?

I was an editor at Rolling Stone magazine in 1969 when the Altamont disaster happened, when people were killed at a free Rolling Stones concert. It was an evil, awful day. I was drained and disgusted with what rock ‘n’ roll had become, and I didn’t want to listen to that music anymore. I found myself in this little record store in Berkeley, and I saw an album by Robert Johnson that had a song called “Four Until Late” that Eric Clapton’s band Cream had covered, so I took it home and played it, and that was just a revelation to me. It led me into another world. It became the bedrock of “Mystery Train.”

Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger signs autographs at Altamont Speedway. Later, on Dec. 6, the Stones gave a concert where one fan was stabbed to death by a Hell’s Angel.

(Associated Press)

Your book explores how certain myths transfer across vastly disparate cultures. Had you read the great mythologist Joseph Campbell prior to writing the book?

I read a lot of Joseph Campbell in graduate school. Probably a half-dozen of his books. In some ways they cover the same territory as “Mystery Train.” Campbell makes the argument that myths persist, they don’t even need to be cultivated. They cultivate us, and they are passed on in almost invisible ways. That really struck a chord with me when reading Campbell’s work.

You’re very good at explaining what music sounds like. Are you influenced by fiction at all?

I’d say fiction is part of my work. One of the books that hovered over me when I was writing “Mystery Train” was “The Great Gatsby.” Certain lines, they sang out.

What is the purpose of criticism?

My next book is about Bryan Ferry, the leader of the band Roxy Music. Now, you listen to a song like Roxy Music’s “More Than This” and you say, what makes this so great? How did that happen? What is going on here? That’s what criticism is, just wrestling with your response to something. That thing where someone has captured a moment so completely that you sort of fall back in awe. That’s what I’ve been doing my whole life as a writer. There is this urge to, not exactly take possession of something, but to become a part of it to some small degree.

Your book plumbs the murky depths, exploring the mysterious dream life of America as transmuted through certain music. Are there any mysteries left for you?

Oh, yes, absolutely. I remember when I met Bob Dylan in 1997. He was getting an award, the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, and I was to give a talk. We met and he asked what I was working on. I had just published a book called “Invisible Republic,” about his “Basement Tapes.” He said, “You should write a sequel to that. You only just scratched the surface.” Now, I’m not saying I did a bad job. He said that to me because certain music has infinite depth. So, yes, there are certainly more mysteries to think about.

📰 The Week(s) in Books

(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

Valerie Castallanos Clark loves Jade Chang’s new novel, “What a Time to Be Alive,” calling it “equal parts love letter to Los Angeles, narrative about being a first-generation Asian American, exploration of grief and love and a found-family novel featuring an adoptee that doesn’t put reunion as the emotional climax.”

With “Shadow Ticket,” Thomas Pynchon has delivered a late-career gem, according to David Kipen: “Dark as a vampire’s pocket, light-fingered as a jewel thief, ‘Shadow Ticket’ capers across the page with breezy, baggy-pants assurance — and then pauses on its way down the fire escape just long enough to crack your heart open.”

Finally, Cerys Davies chats with Mychal Threets about his new gig as host of the long-running TV show “Reading Rainbow.”

📖 Bookstore Faves

Stories Books & Cafe is on Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park.

(Claudia Colodro)

Ever since it opened its doors in 2008, Stories Books & Cafe has been a community cornerstone. A snug yet carefully curated store, with loads of obscurantist art books and choice indie press titles, Stories also has a cafe tucked in the back that is always bustling. Owner Claudia Colodro runs the store as a creative cooperative with her five co-workers. I talked to the team about the shop on Sunset.

What’s selling right now?

“Mother Mary Comes to Me” by Arundhati Roy, “Martyr!” by Kaveh Akbar, and Thomas Pynchon’s “Shadow Ticket” are a few of our recent big sellers.

Stories is small, yet I always see titles in there I don’t see anywhere else.

Stories prides itself on its painstaking curation, influenced by every employee’s area of expertise. Much like the community we have garnered, Stories leans toward the eclectic, esoteric and even fringe. Over our 17 years in existence, Stories has been a bookstore that loves our local authors and independent publishers, and encourages readers to come in with an open mind more than a predetermined list.

Remarkably, you have endured in a neighborhood that has seen a lot of store closures, post-COVID.

In a world predominantly automatized and authoritative, we like our people and books to be a countermeasure to the mainstream creature comforts — in hopes to push people out of the path of least resistance and into the unseen abundance.

Stories Books & Cafe is at 1716 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles.