Wow!

originally posted by Florida Jim:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Despite the obvious gender non-neutrality of the term, my wife is even more a floozy wine afficionado than I am, but, unlike Florida Jim, she does not extend her afficionado enthusiasm to floozies of other kinds, at least to my knowledge.
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'Never heard the line "sleaze to please?"
Best, Jim
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Now, you see, this is why we need a category discussion. I myself have always been charmed by sleazy characters. Gail finds them pointedly uncharming and claims not to be charmed by my affection for them. And yet she likes floozy wines and, truth be told, is charmed by floozies in fiction ("floozies in fiction," I think there's a course there).
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
("floozies in fiction," I think there's a course there).
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Please to post a reading list, Prof. I have my own thoughts on the subject, but that will stay rub rosa until your list appears.

Mark Lipton
 
originally posted by MLipton:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
("floozies in fiction," I think there's a course there).
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Please to post a reading list, Prof. I have my own thoughts on the subject, but that will stay rub rosa until your list appears.

Mark Lipton
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As soon as one thinks about it, the problem becomes whether the term designates whores with hearts of gold, women who are no better than they ought to be, women of easy virtue, all or only some of the above.

As a quick indication, I'd instance Moll Flanders, Josepha from Cousine Better, Roseannette from Sentimental Education, and, one of my favorites, Signora Neroni from Barchester Towers. I could think of lots more in Balzac and probably Dumas. I'm surprised by how few I can think of in 19th century English fiction, unless you include in the list schemers like Becky Sharp. Once you get to 20th century literature, the figure starts to fall into genre fiction since modernism became uninterested in the kind of domestic fiction that made the character either comic or sentimental-tragic, depending on the plot. But she's all over hard boiled detective stuff and film noirs. You can go on from there.
 
Interesting. Interesting, too, is turning back to the 18th century, which might provide more in England but fewer (or none) in France, since the essentially tawdry or somehow undignified quality of the floozy doesn't work in the framework of libertinage. You could never call Manon Lescaut or Marianne in Marivaux's La Vie de Marianne floozies.

But then, maybe in a pinch some of Sade's heroines could be.

Or saucy soubrettes from Marivaux's theater, actually.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
But she's all over hard boiled detective stuff and film noirs. You can go on from there.
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Me too. Since dropping out the Napa Valley Kult Kab Klub Of The Month list, the only of-the-month organization I still belong to is Hard Case Crime .

I think James M. Cain probably wrote the best floozies, but it's sort of a wide open field.

-Eden (you want I should rate you?)
 
Frank, good point.

Jonathan, I would argue that floozies (in the form of professionals, actually) reappear in the French literature of the 1930s, from Cline's Voyage au Bout de la Nuit to Sartre's La Nause to Drieu La Rochelle's short stories - not to mention the cinema of Carn with the exemplary figure of Arletty. "Atmosphre!"

But that, actually, is because these authors were influenced by a view of American grittiness derived from early genre fiction, so you're not entirely off the mark, I think.

Whereas in England, sadder (I'm thinking Maugham & co.), the young women are wan shopgirls and the like, at that time.
 
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
Interesting. Interesting, too, is turning back to the 18th century, which might provide more in England but fewer (or none) in France, since the essentially tawdry or somehow undignified quality of the floozy doesn't work in the framework of libertinage. You could never call Manon Lescaut or Marianne in Marivaux's La Vie de Marianne floozies.

But then, maybe in a pinch some of Sade's heroines could be.

Or saucy soubrettes from Marivaux's theater, actually.
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Generally, I agree. But there was a minor character in Liaisons Dangereuses on whose rump Valmont wrote a punning love letter to Mme. de Tourvel. There may be more such secondary characters.
 
I don't buy Nancy. Unless we're talking about the musical comedy, she lacks the cheerfulness about her state, which seems to me requisite. She does fall into the constant category of whore with a heart of gold, as does Sonia in Crime and Punishment, but neither of them seem to me to be floozies. One might say that the character can't exist in tragedies, but they clearly does show up in melodramas, so that isn't it.

I don't remember the characters you're refering to in Sartre or Celine (I've only read Mort a Credit by Celine, so I may just not know the right character) and, alas, I've never read Drieu.
 
Both feature loose hooker women who are, well, whores with a heart of... flesh. In Voyage, she's American.

Oh, and Proust's Odette is definitely a floozy.
 
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
Both feature loose hooker women who are, well, whores with a heart of... flesh. In Voyage, she's American.

Oh, and Proust's Odette is definitely a floozy.
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How could I have forgotten Odette, falsifying my claim about the absence of floozies in modernism? I hereby turn expertise in this field and my incipient course over to Sharon.
 
originally posted by Cliff:
Nothing in Piron or Crbillon fils?
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Crbillon fils, like Vivant Denon and I'd say, also, anonymous works like Thrse philosophe and La Petite maison, all play into the philosophical and smart libertine woman I think's pretty unlike a floozy.

Never read Piron.

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
I hereby turn expertise in this field and my incipient course over to Sharon.
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No! We need your talent.
 
originally posted by David M. Bueker:
Any female character in a Heinlein novel (including the computers), except that they tend to carry laser pistols.
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I'd disagree, because I find Heinlein's female characters to not be particularly floozie-esque. I remember them as being strong and not overly manipulative. Sort of like the women in most of Harlan Ellison's work.

Good tip about Lady Slings the Booze. I'll have to track down a copy.

-Eden (I wish I had more time to read...maybe then I could keep up with Sharon and Jonathan's conversation)
 
When I think "floozie" I guess think 40-50s film noir - melodramatic morality tales, with punchy dialogue and Humphrey Bogart playing the tough guy detective. A character like the younger sister in The Big Sleep (I don't remember her name) about whom Philip Marlowe says something along the lines of "she tried to sit in my lap...and I was standing up at the time."

A "floozie" almost by definition has to be secondary character, doesn't she? Someone with an obvious sort of appeal and an almost cartoonish quality.

I agree with Thor's comment that Fla. Jim cursing comes across as cute.
 
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