more on Pynchon, plastic, and pop culture

[David Mugmon]

Another screaming comes across the sky in the form of tiny bits of plastic.

They float in giant patches in the Pacific. They wash down rivers and
creeks. They seep into the soil of hills and valleys. And now, a
growing body of research says they’re falling from the sky.

The research team concluded that larger shreds of plastic, just
slightly smaller than a grain of rice, had been swept up in nearby
cities by storms and dropped with rain or snow. Smaller shreds,
undetectable to the naked eye and more prevalent, had circulated in
atmospheric channels, like the jet stream, and found their way across
oceans before descending. The team analyzed weather patterns to deduce
the movement of the microplastics.


https://www.sfchronicle.com/environment/article/Plastic-particles-are-raining-from-the-sky-15358343.php

On Wed, Jun 24, 2020 at 11:03 AM David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PSxihhBzCjk
>
> One word, plastics.
>
> On Wed, Jun 24, 2020 at 9:53 AM Meikle, Jeffrey L <meikle at mail.utexas.edu>
> wrote:
>
> > At the risk of sounding my own horn (much muted by covid isolation), I'd
> > like to add a source on Pynchon and plastic to go with the German article
> > from 2017 posted by Kai Frederik Lorentzen. My book American Plastic: A
> > Cultural History, from 1995, mostly covers the scientific, technological,
> > commercial, design, and marketing expansion of plastics from the late 19th
> > century to the end of the 20th. There's much on the symbolism of plastics
> > and plasticity throughout, but the final chapter, "Beyond Plastic: The
> > Culture of Synthesis," explores metaphorical meanings of the words and the
> > concepts they define. One section of that chapter, "A Chemist Whose
> > Molecules Are Words" (pp. 293-299), is about Pynchon, plastic, and
> > Gravity's Rainbow. My book went out of print a couple years ago, but there
> > are lots of used copies for sale, and during these days of closed
> > libraries, you can find a free pdf to download from one of those infamous
> > Russian websites if you do some careful searching. I used to
> >   be a frequent contributer to the list but this is my first post in ages.
> > I'm glad you're all still at it.
> >
> > --
> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l