Dialogue with an Author?

Wayne C. Booth writes that, in order to be a responsible reader, I must "enter into serious dialogue with the author about how his or her values join or conflict with mine" (252). Since this is the conclusion of Booth's essay, I am perplexed that he did not include more information on how a reader should engage in this dialogue with an author.

Perhaps Booth meant that a reader should engage the author in a spoken or written dialogue. The logistics of this might prove difficult; though the use of email might facilitate this process, maintaining email correspondence with an entire readership would be exhausting. This is also an option only available to authors who are still alive.

Perhaps, instead, Booth meant that a reader should engage in a simulated, pretend dialogue with the author. The reader should read an author's interviews, biographies, letters, and journals in order to be able to have enough information to role-play a real life conversation with the author. Realistically, this is quite a lot of work, perhaps too much work to go through with every author whose work one intends to read.

The way I choose to interpret Booth's suggestion is, simply, to read carefully and charitably. A reader should not approach a work hostilely, looking for inconsistencies or blunders, but should suspend her disbelief and trust in the author's intentions and capabilities, at least for the first time through a work.