009 Notes of a Son and Brother

As of November 19, 2018, the entry for the Henry James autobiography Notes of a Son and Brother mentions the childhood accident that caused "the obscure hurt" that haunted James throughout his life, but it does not include the passage from Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises that alludes to the incident, using it as an oblique way of referencing the protagonist Jake Barnes' war injury that has left him unable to have sex. This is the passage about "Henry's bicycle," and which is almost certainly a reference to the "obscure hurt."

008 One of Ours

As of November 19, 2018, the entry for Willa Cather's 1923 novel One of Ours mentions that Hemingway once deprecated the realism of its war scenes in a letter to Edmund Wilson, saying that Cather had lifted these sequences from Birth of a Nation. It does not add, however, that Hemingway included the same observation in his first published "novel" -- the forgettable heavy-handed parody of Sherwood Anderson The Torrents of Spring: "Like this American writer Willa Cather," the passage reads, "who wrote a book about the war where all the last part of it was taken from the action in Birth of a Nation."

007 Running Water (novel)

As of November 18, 2018, the entry for the 1906 adventure novel by A.E.W. Mason Running Water does not mention that it is almost certainly (given its plot) the intended referent in the following passage from Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises: "The book was something by A.E.W. Mason, and I was reading a wonderful story about a man who had been frozen in the Alps and then fallen into a glacier and disappeared [...]" etc.

006 Cupid (Sam Cooke song)

As of November 17, 2018, the entry for the song "Cupid" by the great Sam Cooke does not mention that Bon Jovi's 2005 song "Who Says You Can't Go Home" kinda stole the melody to the chorus. But it would seem the similarity has been noticed before. And the parallels are pretty obvious once you start to notice them. There's the shared trochaic opening, on the same two notes: (Cúpid/Whó says). And a similar end to the line. Ho-o-ome. Bo-o-ow. Still a catchy song, Bon Jovi. I like it a lot. But I might mostly just like it because I like Sam Cooke a lot.

005 Colors Insulting to Nature

As of Saturday, November 17, 2018, the entry for Cintra Wilson's novel Colors Insulting to Nature makes no mention of the fact that the book's cover art was created by American artist Wayne White, painter of snarky prose phrases in pastel block letters superimposed with comic incongruity over bucolic landscape scenes (his cover of the Wilson novel is a fine example of the style). Wayne was also artistic director on Pee-Wee's Playhouse, whatever we are to make of that.

Intriguingly, both Wilson and White came to my attention through the same recent episode of the Omnibus Project (the Ken Jennings/John Roderick podcast), but through an indirect connection. This episode ("Wild Man Fischer") mentioned a book by Carl Wilson (no relation, to my knowledge) about Céline Dion, as well as a Wayne White painting that Ken had recently acquired. It was in the Carl Wilson book that I encountered a reference to a different work by Cintra Wilson, which led to Colors Insulting to Nature, and back to Wayne White again.