Category Romances, Cozy Mysteries, and Civic Virtues: Justifying the Promotion of Popular Fiction in the Public Library.

The active promotion of adult popular fiction in the public library is in need of theoretical justification consistent with that institution's larger political project, a project it is sometimes said to undermine. In this article, the author surveys genre fiction's modern-day discontents in the library field, then proceeds to consider a series of candidate justifications currently on offer in the LIS literature in an effort to resolve the alleged conflict between promoting fiction primarily read for entertainment and advancing democratic ideals. Upon revealing the empirical and theoretical inadequacies of each of these extant justifications, the author develops and defends an alternative in which popular fiction—and, more precisely, genuine aesthetic experience—serves as a resource for the development of dispositions necessary to democratic citizenship. Adopting this justification has far-reaching consequences for the ways in which librarians design and provide recreational reader services to adult patrons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]