There have been several recent memorials of David Foster Wallace. There was a public memorial in New York City, attended by his sister, Zadie Smith, Don Delillo, Jonathan Franzen, and his longtime editor Michael Pietsch, among others. One account of the memorial talks about an assigned nonfiction Wallace essay we’ll never see:

…a piece on Barack Obama and rhetoric, commissioned earlier this year by GQ. [Wallace’s agent] Bonnie Nadell… described conversations between the two and Wallace’s wife Karen on their enthusiasm and excitement over Obama as presidential candidate. The assignment was to focus less on Obama (there was no way he’d get close to the candidate, Nadell said) and more on his speechwriters, those young turks tasked with putting the words of inspiration in Obama’s mouth during stump speeches, town hall meetings and of course, the Democratic National Convention.

And Amherst has a lengthy audio file of the memorial recently held there – it gets emotional at times, and I was particularly affected by a remembrance from a college friend who talks about Wallace’s thoughts about the “spinal” nature of music, mentioning Brian Eno’s “The Big Ship” as a favorite of his. (It is a favorite of mine as well.)