What happens, if the writer is good, is usually not that the work seems derivative or trivial but just the opposite: the work actually acquires depth and resonance from the echoes and chimes it sets up with prior texts, weight from the accumulated use of certain basic patterns and tendencies. Moreover, works are actually more comforting because we recognize elements in them from our prior reading. I suspect that a wholly original work, one that owed nothing to previous writing, would so lack familiarity as to be quite unnerving to readers. So that’s one answer.
I see the author’s point. There’s weight in knowing a work references another, especially if that other work is good. I think it makes you love the book even more knowing it appreciates and acknowledges another one of your beloved pieces of literature.
