From Flann O'Brien's "At Swim-Two-Birds"

Characters should be interchangeable as between one book and another. The entire corpus of existing literature should be regarded as a limbo from which discerning authors could draw their characters as required, creating only when they failed to find a suitable exiting puppet. The modern novel should be largely a work of reference. Most authors spend their time saying what has been said before--usually said much better. A wealth of references to existing works would acquaint the reader instantaneously with the nature of each character, would obliviate tiresome explanations and would effectively preclude mountebanks, upstarts, thimbleriggers and prsons of inferior education from an understanding of contemporary literature.