Plastics!! (and coal tar)

[Tom Stanton]

> From about 1860 until the 1940s, coal-tar products became the main raw
> materials of a large branch of the chemical industry. They were converted
> into dyes, drugs, explosives, plastics, fibers, films, pesticides, paints, rubber,
> and other useful substances. 

The German chemical industry in particular. These guys had a genius for this kind
of thing, which Pynchon appears to acknowledge with a lot of reservation throughout.

> When the demand for these products grew too great for the coke producers to meet,
> petroleum became the main source of aromatic compounds.

Can't recall exactly right now, but P does intimate this in the context of the
US...ever wonder if GR is a parable to Amerika about how *not* to become the Germany
of WW2?

Not a Lit Crit, Just a Fan...
TS