There’s chat in the ether about writers needing to have respect for the reader’s time. It asks whether a long-winded meditation is appropriate for fiction or memoir. The Blue Guitar (John Banville) immediately comes to mind. The narrative structure of Banville’s meditation on aging is buttressed by a carefully layered storyline that keeps the novel moving: one part is the aging narrator’s affair with his best friend’s wife, another is the narrator/painter’s proclivity to steal esoteric treasures that no one seems to care about (of which the wife of his best friend might be considered one), and the third part is the narrator’s constant reflection on the past. These threads weave a tapestry, of sorts. Banville paints the two couples as a “quartet,” now split due to the affair with the narrator on the outside, playing his melancholy guitar. And yet, it takes time to arrive at this, to chew on the language and think about the subject. We make a mistake painting with broad-brush strokes, over-determining who the reader is or who the writer is, for that matter. Had I read the Banville novel without considering the threads that united the narrator’s stock-taking throughout, I might have been tempted to agree with others that such pondering is better suited to memoir.  Instead, I say, it depends on the book, and it depends on the art the writer wishes to create. How can we say that doesn’t respect readers? Readers have choices, as do writers. Banville’s writing is beautiful, his questions real and relevant at any age.