GPT-4 Couldn’t Resurrect My Dad

Over the decade before he died, in 2014, my father sent me thousands of emails. Carefully-crafted little gems, their subjects ranged from general advice, drawn from his own hardscrabble existence, to musings about the matriarchal nature of orca society, the baldness of Catholics, and his deeply-held belief that the original World Trade Center in New York had never existed at all. Even now, his salutations — which mirrored how he would address me on the phone — linger in my mind: “Hey scholar of scrotes and the scrotum”, “just a thorn in the side of Christ here and now”, “sonnyboo u do not know the pain of a hernia nor 3-to-4 as I have had”, “late one huh CasaNova…..out pettin poose I guess and no time for Granddaddy……”