Yet Sebald is not flippant with his trivia - his digressions work hard to echo in miniature the work's larger concerns.
The radio and television executives who work with Mr. Harvey tend to echo Ms. Davis.
Patinkin's work on "Criminal Minds" seems to echo his "Heartburn" experience, though on the TV show, he fired himself.
Lennon's job now is to train cadets to speak up, to hold their ground, to listen, to work as a team, to echo each other through checklist after checklist after checklist.
Monk has always liked to echo the work of modern masters – Bruce Nauman, Ed Ruscha, Sol LeWitt – and his echoing has always been ambiguous, part homage and part jape.
It seems to echo the work of the existentialists Sartre and Camus, and Camus acknowledged that he had learned from Simenon.
His breakthrough work in 1967 even seemed to echo "underground" comic-book stylists of the day, notably R. Crumb, though evidently he was unaware of them at first.
"It may work," Mandy purred, allowing Paxman to echo the answer with trademark incredulous relish, during a conversation in which, on several occasions, he pulled, to the delight of admirers, his most celebrated "snorting horse" look of sneering disbelief.
Her work so far has tended to echo classic R&B singers and 1960s girl groups, with some gospel strands, but she said that during her recent United States tour she "was exposed to a lot of country, rockabilly and bluegrass," and it captured her imagination.
