When authors give shout outs to other great works, people, and events, it's usually not accidental. Put on your super-sleuth hat and figure out why.
Literary and Philosophical References
- Herman Melville and Moby Dick (throughout)
- Chinua Achebe (2.60)
- Alexis de Tocqueville (2.60, 22.9)
- The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (5.13)
- Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle (5.44)
- Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (7.2)
- Henry David Thoreau, Walden (7.2, 67.20, 67.24)
- Carl Jung (10.5)
- Raymond Carver (10.35)
- Judy Blume (10.74)
- Friedrich Nietzsche (10.76, 34.93)
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (14.53, 67.24, 80.21)
- William Shakespeare, Hamlet (18.20)
- J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (18.109)
- John Updike, Rabbit, Run (19.109)
- Leon Uris (19.109)
- Walt Whitman (throughout Chapter 22)
- William James (22.9)
- Plato (22.9)
- T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (29.1, 29.28, 39.31)
- Homer, The Iliad (29.3)
- Anton Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard (30.3)
- John Milton (34.103)
- John Keats (34.103)
- Affenlight and Owen read aloud from "Lear" (38.26), which is likely William Shakespeare's King Lear, as the bard has been referenced before. Still, who knows? They could be reading old All in the Family scripts written by Norman Lear.
- James Joyce, Ulysses (39.21)
- Michel Foucault (40.58)
- Haruki Murakami (47.2)
- Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow (50.23)
- "Do I dare, and do I dare" is an allusion to T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (50.24)
- Anne Frank, Diary of a Young Girl (55.1)
- Marcel Proust (64.37)
- Karl Marx (67.24)
- Anton Chekov (70.13)
Historical References
- Marcus Aurelius (5.90, 18.64)
- Epictetus (5.90)
- Bill Clinton (17.10)
- John F. Kennedy (17.10)
- Watergate (50.23)
- Roe v. Wade (50.23)
- The Vietnam War (50.23)
- Abraham Lincoln (70.13)
Pop Culture References
- Chuck D (34.103)
- Groundhog Day (40.41)
- U2 (60.17)
- Crockett and Tubbs (from Miami Vice) (60.21)
- Madonna (60.21)