Novelist time is reptile time; novelists tend to be ruminant and brooding, nursers of ancient grievances, second-guessers, Tuesday afternoon quarterbacks, retrospectators, endlessly, like slumping hitters, studying the film of their old whiffs. You find novelists going over and over the same ground in their novels–TNC was talking about Gatsby last week, Fitzgerald’s a prime example–configuring and reconfiguring the same little set of preoccupations, haunted by missed opportunities.

Michael Chabon, rambling about writing, again