Badfinger and the Beatles from James W. Ziskin

Are there books you love so much that you find their tone creeping up in your work? Where is the line between homage and plagiarism?

No, I do not imitate my favorite writers. 

At least I don’t believe I do. Could be wrong, of course, but I doubt it. The reason why is because, when it comes to writing, I follow my own linguistic idiosyncrasies—semantic and syntactic—with utmost zeal and devotion. I love language, from the teensiest morphemes and phonemes to the long-windiest monuments of rhetorical...