I’m being interviewed tomorrow by a journalist on the history of cleavage. Having written Mistress of the Sun, a novel set in the 17th century court of the Sun King, I’m now an expert.
Right?
Yes and No.
I have some insights, some opinions on this, but I’ve not looked into the subject in any formal way. So: time to cram.
Of course the first thing I do to prep for this interview is Google the subject. One of the links to pop up is to an academic paper titled, “Parties and Cleavages in the European Political Space.” (It occurs to me that this was an unfortunate choice of words for the title of a serious work, that the use of “party” and “cleavage” together is certain to give rise to hecklers.)
I persevere.
The next link brings up an article in the Journal of Metamorphic Geology. The article includes the sentence: “We interpret this to reflect a pressure-solution mechanism for cleavage development, where precipitation from a very small fluid reservoir fractionated that fluid.”
(How would you interpret this sentence?)
And further: “…the history of cleavage formation in the area is more protracted and complex. To unravel the cleavage history…”
Onward — for I must, indeed, unravel the history of cleavage, and quickly.
Dear Katie,
I love when readers dig deep, but I don’t always have the answers (especially when my archives are in my snowed-in northern home in Canada). Here’s what I wrote to a reader who asked the same question several years ago:
“I’d read that Napoleon had named Josephine after the heroine in Le Sourd, but I never checked it out. Here’s what I suggest:
“This website lists several plays with “sourd” in the title: http://www.cesar.org.uk
“(Note re searching: you’ll get results searching for the word “sourd” only, not “le sourd”.) It does not, however, give the text.
“I would then take that information to the French national library on-line:
http://gallica.bnf.fr/
“They have an amazing number of works on-line. The database is not perfect, however. Sometimes you have to try different ways of searching to get what you want.”
Now the search capabilities of the Net are much stronger. A quick search of books.google.com indicates that the reference is from Napoleon Bonaparte: An Intimate Biography by Vincent Cronin:
http://books.google.com/books?id=VqZAAAAAIAAJ&q=le+sourd+josephine&dq=le+sourd+josephine&pgis=1
I hope that helps!
Sincerely,
Sandra Gulland
http://www.sandragulland.com
Tonight club is reviewing the Secret Sorrows of Josephine B… the second one is on the way in the mail! Thank you for writing such an interesting book- I have one question – on pg. 402 when Bonaparte calls ‘Rose’ Josephine he explains that he names her that after the heroine in La Sourd. I googled La Sourd and not seeing anything about a play – could you give me some information about that… thanks.. Katie
Thanks for your comment on my site. I wasn’t kidding, I stayed up all night reading Josephine B until the end and then got sick – but didn’t care – that’s how good it is! haha
Can’t wait for the next book! Stop by again if you’d like to do a virtual author tour.
Best to you!
Cherie
Thanks for dropping by my site! I was so excited to see your comment, and appreciated you taking the time. I can’t wait to get to the Josephine B. Trilogy! (One of my daughters is named Josephine – it’s a lovely name.)
I hope you turned up better luck with the cleavage search – they really wanted you to speak on that?! lol! As long as the journalist didn’t require…well, anyway, hope it went well!
http://www.diaryof1.com