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

[Jeffery Wilson]

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. /
/
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