Call me David.  Well, no, don’t.  That would out me as a literary thief, like Oliver Otway Orme, the protagonist of John Banville’s new novel, The Blue Guitar (Knopf, $25.95). A renowned purloiner of literature himself—Banville steals his title from Wallace Stevens’s poem “The Man with the Blue Guitar,” and the opening line, “Call me Autolycus,” at once borrows from Moby-Dick and Greek mythology—the Man-Booker-winning novelist crafts a Joycean story about typical characters doing ordinary things—things like stealing. But when Orme takes works of art, he does it not for resale value but simply to see his act get noticed. He also steals his best friend’s wife, much as if she, too, were a museum piece. Along with Banville, Orme also enjoys the art of alliteration: “The objects, the artefacts, that I purloin—there is a nice word, prim and pursed,” or pounding the drumbeat of repetition:  “The past, the past. It was the past that brought me back here, for here . . . here it is forever the past.” Banville’s Orme is much like Autolycus, whose knack for stealing was put to the test when he made off with the helmet Odysseus uses to make himself invisible.  And, like the blue guitarist, Orme tries desperately to change things as they are.  Alas, he can’t.  Orme remains invisible, a thief unrevealed. For Banville, all this is an opportunity to do what he does best—indulge his love of language, and show off his unparalleled skill as not just a wordsmith, but a word wizard.