(urth) "been teaching literature for over 35 years"

[David Stockhoff]

On 9/9/2013 8:17 AM, Jeffery Wilson wrote:
> On 9/9/2013 6:49 AM, David Stockhoff wrote:
>>
>> On 9/9/2013 12:35 AM, Jeff Wilson wrote:
>>> I would think that any volume of plastic would indicate either 
>>> enough time
>>> for new petroleum to form, or that not enough time had yet passed for
>>> processed plastic to crumble.
>>
>> Exactly. Severian doesn't call it plastic, but he refers to colored 
>> bits of something, so it has already crumbled.
>>
>> Possibly it's a stretch and simply put there as a general clue to 
>> Severian's post-oil extraction time period. Since there could have 
>> been a vast amount of it lying around (probable; in fact I always 
>> took it as a bit of a joke, sort of dinosaurs-to-oil in reverse) I'd 
>> think it would be difficult to get a good estimate of how long it 
>> would take for all of it to disappear.
>
> Ah! "..../the kind of sand that artists call polychrome (because 
> flecks of every color are mixed with its whiteness) is actually not 
> sand at all, but the glass of the past, now pounded to powder by aeons 
> of tumbling in the clamourous sea."
>
> /I can see the confusion of plastic with glass by unilluminated 
> people, but it should be too light to mix with sand, and perhaps 
> should be as familiar as Sev says prosthetic limbs are. //

You're right---glass, not plastic. I suppose the plastic is gone.