183: Zadie Smith’s On Beauty is loosely inspired by E.M. Forster’s Howards End. (The phrase “Only connect…” appears in Howards End and is also the title of the E.M. Forster website. )
184: Connect the philosopher to the caricatured gent. The pensive strummer could act as a clue.
Vanity Fair? Thackeray’s novel, Graydon Carter’s magazine, Paul McCartney’s song (Riding to Vanity Fair)
David Hume inspired the character name of Desmond David Hume who is a Dickens devotee carrying the “Our mutual friend” which is the last book he intends to read before dying which is what John Irving says in many of his interviews.
Paul McCartney’s Jenny Wren in the album ‘Chaos and Creation in the Backyard’ is about the character Jenny Wren in the book ‘Our Mutual Friend’.