Michael (Mickey) Choate
I was traveling when the news arrived. Mickey Choate, my literary agent, had died suddenly. As his wife, Laurel, later explained to me, this long-time runner and life-long non-smoker had been diagnosed with lung cancer. The disease was brutal and quick. He was 52.
Along with Laurel, he’s mourned by his children, family, friends, colleagues and a long list of writers he’s championed, including me. One of my favorite memories of Mickey is when he took me to lunch on a rare visit I was making to New York. This made me feel like a “real” writer — bustling Manhattan, a fancy place, energetic talk about books. I’d finished More Terrible than Death, a non-fiction book on Colombia that Mickey was circulating to editors.
Mickey was younger than I thought he’d be (he had the voice of an older person), handsome, funny, whip-thin. He was utterly without pretension, an enthusiast and lover of life. At the time, several top chefs in the city were courting him hoping he’d help develop cook books. Instead of ordering off the menu, the chef at this restaurant sent us the most delectable tasting plates, his finest delicacies. I can still remember the bite of arctic char I had — the best fish ever, and one I haven’t dared eat since, so as not to ruin the memory.
Mickey wolfed the food down, appreciative, glorying in the flavors, full of praise and questions. He appeared absolutely uninterested in the trappings — the fancy restaurant, the glittering lights. Sensation and delight were his lodestars. He could have been at a pit barbecue shack in Goldsboro or some Chicago dive — he was a lover and appreciator of life, and I was hooked. This was a man who loved deeply — his family, life and definitely and especially books.
He was full of excitement about a new cookbook he was developing about artisanal marshmallows. Having recently returned from another brutal human rights trip to Colombia, I felt a sneer coming on — seriously? When the world is ending (I could be like that and god love him he never said a word of rebuke)? Then he started to explain why — you could get these flavors, these shapes, you could make them for your kids, you could use them to decorate… And I saw it, that love of life and diversity and enjoyment. This is a man who can teach me something, I realized, about being where you are, when you are, in the moment. Of course, now there are loads of cookbooks about artisanal marshmallows, showing that Mickey was ahead of the hipster curve.
Whenever an editor didn’t respond to his submissions (and in my case, this tends to be often), Mickey seemed to take this directly to heart, hurting for me. He was an old-style agent — personal, hands-on, sometimes brutally frank (after some conversations about submissions strategy, I went straight to the Teelings to recover), but always in a way that was meant to be realistic and supportive. He believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself.
Publishing sucks. Submitting sucks. Getting rejected sucks. But I couldn’t have had a better ally in this sucky suckness than Mickey. I miss him.
His family has asked for donations to the Cancer Research Institute, and I’m making mine today.