Tapestry Novels

I find myself increasingly interested in the idea of what I call the Tapestry Novel. Over the course of an authors career it will always become obvious that there were certain themes that were visited and revisited. In a select few bodies of work though it becomes apparent that there is something larger going on. You not only have the reappearance of themes, but words, phrases, objects and most importantly characters. A large cast of characters that don't all appear in all of the books but make frequent appearances. This has the effect of creating a real world. Some of the greatest practitioners of this are Edward Whittemore, Robertson Davies, Russell Hoban (in his latter works) and Jonathan Carroll. Its Carroll's works that I'm concerned with now. My hope is to explore this concept in greater.