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1. A few Good Friday thoughts on a great writer who died this week, Gene Wolfe. Never read Gene Wolfe? You're still in his debt if you've ever enjoyed Pringles stacked potato chips. He helped invent those.
2. That Wolfe (1931-2019) died a week before Easter and a half-day before Notre-Dame burned is a fact perhaps over-rich with meaning. He was a Catholic convert whose masterwork, The Book of the New Sun, has one of its central images a burning cathedral.
3. The immediate impetus to Wolfe's conversion was his marriage to Rosemary Dietsch in 1956 but the peace he found in the church (and indeed in his marriage) is also connected to his traumatic military service during the Korean war, where he experienced & witnessed horror.
4. Korea, so forgotten in popular memory, was horrific beyond belief. 20% of the North Korean population was killed, making it one of the most lethal wars in human history. Wolfe was in the thick of battle witnessing some fearful reprisals.
5. Wolfe came back from Korea, in his own words, "a mess" -- prone to nightmares and quick to drop to the floor when he heard a load noise. Much of his work is about the hidden trauma of war, hidden because society doesn't want to talk about.
6. Can those who have committed horrific acts be redeemed? That's the question The Book of the New Sun, whose narrator is a torturer, takes up. It provides no easy answers.
7. The philosophical questions Wolfe took up are only interesting, of course, because of his literary prowess. He was an amazing writer, who somehow synthesized the plots of pulp fiction (aliens & man-apes) with a Proustian tact & sensitivity. Le Guin called him "our Melville."
8. Wolfe's day job for many years was as an engineer for Proctor and Gambles, where he helped develop the Pringle's stacked chip. Amazingly, he also looked like Mr. Pringle. 
9. Anyways, here are my deeper reflections on the life and work of Gene Wolfe (RIP). Perhaps of interest to anyone who cares about Catholicism and/or science fiction. @ebruenig @michaelbd @DouthatNYT @MichaelSwanwick @neilhimself @pnh @EllenDatlow newrepublic.com/article/153615…
