6. THE LAST TWO YEARS
New York and Cuba, 1960–1962
Anybody who is "non-communist left" today and goes into the hungry nation bloc, he's got one hell of a set of problems.C. Wright Mills, letter to
E. P. Thompson, late 1960
During his last two years Mills worked at home, visited Cuba, and traveled in Europe and the Soviet Union. He and his wife, Yaroslava, and his two younger children lived for a month in Switzerland and several months in England before returning to New York. He completed work on two mass-market paperbacks (Listen, Yankee: The Revolution in Cuba and The Marxists) and wrote articles for left-wing journals as well as mainstream magazines.
In August of 1960, Mills spent two weeks in Cuba, doing research for Listen, Yankee, which was written in the style of a letter from a Cuban revolutionary attempting to communicate with his United States neighbors about Cuban life under Batista, the ill effects of U.S. policies toward Cuba, and the accomplishments of Castro's revolution—especially in the areas of education and health care.
Mills's visit to Cuba was a pivotal experience for him. He explained its background this way:
Until the summer of 1960, I had never been in Cuba nor even thought about it much. In fact, the previous fall, when I was in Brazil, and in the spring of 1960, when I was in Mexico for several months, I was embarrassed not to have any firm attitude towards the Cuban revolution. For in both Rio de Janeiro and Mexico City, Cuba was of course a major topic of discussion.
[1] Fidel Castro had come to power in January 1959, after leading the revolution that ousted Batista.
But I did not know what was happening there, much less what I might think about it, and I was then busy with other studies.In the late spring of 1960, when I decided "to look into Cuba," I first read everything I could find and summarized it: partly in the form of questions to which I could find no answers in print. With these questions, and a few ideas on how to go about getting answers to them, I went to Cuba.
[2] Listen, Yankee: The Revolution in Cuba (New York: Ballantine Books, 1960), 9.
Mills interviewed journalists, soldiers, intellectuals, government officials, and citizens in Cuba; he spent three and a half eighteen-hour days interviewing and touring with Prime Minister Fidel Castro (using a wire recorder) and interviewing most
[3] Notation from Saul Landau to K. Mills, April 1998.
When Mills returned home he completed the manuscript in an intense six weeks of working day and night. He wrote, "My major aim in this book is to present the voice of the Cuban revolutionary, as clearly and as emphatically as I can, and I have taken up this aim because of its absurd absence from the news of Cuba available in the United States today."
[4] Listen, Yankee, 8.
In December of 1960, Harper's Magazine made Mills's piece criticizing U.S. policy toward Cuba the cover story; the article was adapted from the book and was entitled "Listen, Yankee: The Cuban Case against the United States." The FBI clipped that article and included it in its entirety in the Bureau's file on Mills.
In April of 1960, a few months before Mills wrote the following piece, one of the first civil rights bills in a century passed in the U.S. Senate (despite a Southern filibuster), but the resulting bill concerning voting rights was so encumbered by federal procedures for enforcement that the small gains were nullified.
[5] William Miller, A New History of the United States (New York: Dell Publishing, 1958, 1962, 1968), 462. Also Gorton Carruth, What Happened When: A Chronology of Life and Events in America (New York: Penguin Books, 1991), 891.
To Tovarich, from West Nyack, New York, summer 1960
ON RACE AND RELIGION
Listen! I will be honest with you, I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes.Walt Whitman, from
"Song of the Open Road"
Tovarich, every now and then I have to go to the local hospital, a baby has been born or something. There I see on every wall those heroically gentle pictures of Jesus Christ—just like the heroic and not gentle pictures of Lenin on the walls of offices in your country.
Don't misunderstand me; I know what I am talking about; I was an Irish altar boy before I reached the age of consent, and Tovarich, I never revolted from it; I never had to. For some reason, it never took. It was all a bit too tangible and bloody. Then too, my father was a Catholic only for my mother's sake—and although he was not an educated man, he was and is the most honest man I have ever known. Early on I got the idea he didn't believe in it. He never said so; all he said was, "I just don't know, son, I really don't." He was puzzled and his puzzlement was enough for me; it never took.
The same sort of thing happened on "the racial business." My mother spoke Spanish before English; she was brought up on a ranch by Mexicans and she truly loved them—not like a gringo lady, but as one human being loves another. For her, I think, Mexicans have always formed her ideal images of The Human Being. And I got that from her.
I wasn't really aware of any differences between Jews and Gentiles and Mexicans and Irishmen and Negroes until I was well into my teens. Then it came as a shock to me, and I instantly rejected the idea of racial superiority and inferiority. In fact, maybe I did that a little too instantly. I was driving a truck that summer—I was under twenty—hauling collapsible houses in the East Texas oil fields. I came to the lumberyard where I was to be loaded; two Negroes started to load my truck and I jumped out to help them. A white man came up and hit one of them on the head with a two-by-four. "Don't you be getting that white boy to work alongside you, you black bastard," he said. The other Negro ran; the one hit lay on the ground, blood on his scalp; I was up on the tail of the truck when it happened; I did not think, I just jumped, booted feet first, into the silly man's face. I think he must have been drunk; otherwise it might have ended differently—he was quite large. As it was, he stayed down, and I got out of there with the hit Negro groaning on the passenger seat, holding his head in both hands.
I have never forgotten the blood on that man's head, nor regretted in the slightest trying to kill the white man. Oh yes, Tovarich, that is what I was trying to do. As I've said, I was well under twenty at the time. It may be that this little incident has meant much more to me
The point is I have never been interested in what is called "the Negro problem." Perhaps I should have been and should be now. The truth is, I've never looked into it as a researcher. I have a feeling that if I did it would turn out to be "a white problem" and I've got enough of those on my hands just now.
But that isn't quite good enough, is it? The only answer—I didn't say practical program, feasible plan, etc., I said the answer—is so obvious that it has no intellectual interest, and so in the longterm, as matters now stand, it has no political interest. The answer, of course, is full and complete marriage between members of all races.
Immediately I hear the Southern voices from my late adolescence, drawling, as if to clinch the point once and forever: "You'd want your daughter to marry a Nigger?"
Well, it so happens I have a daughter [Pamela] who is seventeen. If she came to me and said, "I am going to marry so-and-so; he is black"—or brown, or yellow, or red, or pink—"I'm for him and he's for me," I would immediately say three things to her:
"You've thought about it—you really are for this boy?"
"Then name the first one after me.
"How can I help you both get set up outside the USA?"
[6] As it turned out, Pamela married a Brazilian of Russian and Romanian Jewish parents, named their first son Carlos, the Portuguese equivalent of Charles, in honor of her father, and settled in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Number three I think would be wisest, if they wanted to do anything with their lives other than fight racial silliness. Of course, that's a good thing to do with your life, but I'd want them to realize fully that is what they'd be choosing. I know that the "Negro in America" has made Great Progress, etc., etc. That's all true. Yet still, as of now, the US of A is a white tyranny. It will remain so until there is no distinction whatsoever drawn in marriages between the races.
Now I have a question for you, Tovarich. Why haven't you
In a sense, Mills's fierce opposition to racism in the South mirrored his defense of the nascent Cuban revolution. Later he reminded his mother of her fondness for the Mexican culture and told her, "The Cubans are my Mexicans."
[7] See letter on p. 331.
To Fidel Castro, from West Nyack, New York, dated September 20, 1960
Dear Dr. Castro:
When I was in Cuba last month, Dr. Franz Stettmeier of the University of Oriente asked me to try to get some young professors for him, to teach there and possibly to work with INRA.
[8] Instituto Nacional de Reforma Agraria (National Institute of Agrarian Reform).
I have now found one such man and wish to recommend him as strongly as I am able. I have written to Dr. Stettmeier about him but am following that up with this note to you, a copy of which goes to Dr. Stettmeier.1: The man's name is Edward Thompson; he is an Englishman who now teaches, I believe, at the University of Hull. Address: Holly Bank, Whitegate, Halifax, York, England. If you spent ten minutes with him you would see at once that he is a real thinker. He is, in fact, one of the most brilliant young men of Great Britain. He can teach political theory or sociology of English literature or—given a month or so—anything that needs to be taught. Until the Hungarian affair, he was, I understand, a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, but now has no political affiliation. He is an editor of the New Left Review, a magazine in Britain for which I write. If you should approve "The Cuban Seminar on Varieties of Marxism," about which I am writing to you separately, I'd certainly be glad if Thompson were in it. For there is no nonsense in this man about Communism or antiCommunism. He is an honest observer and straight thinker.
2: I write to you about him because it occurs to me that Dr. Stettmeier may run into practical difficulties in getting him. Mr. Thompson is very poor, his wife, Dorothy—who could also teach in the university—would of course come to Cuba with him, and they have two or three children. Their transportation to Cuba would have to be advanced to them in some way. I have found out that he is willing, indeed, eager to take up some work in Cuba.
What else can I say? Do try to get this man.
Sincerely yours,
C. Wright MillsProfessor of SociologyColumbia University
copy to Edward Thompson
E. P. Thompson and Dorothy Thompson did not receive an invitation to teach in Cuba, much to their disappointment. They understood from two sources that the reason they were not invited was that someone had told the Cubans that Edward Thompson was not politically reliable.
[9] Letter from Dorothy Thompson to K. Mills, dated September 23, 1997.
Somehow the FBI obtained a copy of the manuscript for Listen, Yankee prior to its publication.
[10] In November 1960.
Although the FBI's review of the book's political content was negative, an informant's assessment of its literary merit was actually favorable, which was one reason the Bureau was dismayed at the prospect of its publication. An FBI agent wrote that on October 24, 1960, the informant described his reactions to the manuscript for the book and concluded that as it was "such an artfully written piece of proCastro and pro-Communist propaganda, handled in a competent manner and easily readable style, it is highly likely to become a factor in disarming and confusing public opinion in this country.… It asserts that the regime in Cuba is not Communist as widely believed here." In a "Note to the Reader" in Listen, Yankee, Mills wrote: "The Cuban revolutionary is a new and distinct type of left-wing thinker and actor. He is neither capitalist nor Communist. He is socialist in a manner, I believe, both practical and humane. And if Cuba is let alone, I believe that Cubans have a good chance to keep the socialist society they are building practical and humane. If Cubans are properly helped—economically, technically, and culturally—I[11] 11. Listen, Yankee, 181–83, 188–89.
According to the FBI report, the Bureau agent approached Ian Ballantine (the publisher of the book) and attempted to convince him to solicit proposals from other writers who would refute the arguments Mills presented in Listen, Yankee. Judging from the report, Ian (whose aunt was Emma Goldman) handled the situation with great diplomacy: he told the agent that the FBI would be able to pursue such a project in a more sophisticated and effective way than he could himself, and he asked them to please inform him if they found someone for the task.
The following letter is addressed to Carlos Fuentes, the internationally recognized Mexican writer, who was in his early thirties at the time. Mills mentions his upcoming debate with A. A. Berle Jr., whom Mills had quoted and argued against within the text of Listen, Yankee. (And in 1956 Berle had argued against Mills's The Power Elite in a review in the New York Times Book Review.)
[12] "Are the Blind Leading the Blind?" New York Times Book Review (22 April 1956): 3, 22.
To Carlos Fuentes, from West Nyack, New York, dated October 19, 1960
Dear Carlos:
Thank you so much for your letter of 15 October; with it came a note from Senor Orfila;
[13] Arnaldo Orfila Reynal, of the Mexican publishing house Fondo de Cultura Economica.
I have passed it on to my agent here, who is handling the translations [of Listen, Yankee]. I am delighted that Gonzalez and wife would do the job if the Fondo brought it out, and it is exactly a large paperback in cheap edition that I want. I've asked my agent, Brandt and Brandt […] to set it up with Fondo, if they want it.[14] Fondo de Cultura Economica did publish the Mexican edition of Listen, Yankee, translated by Julieta Campos and Enrique Gonzalez Pedrero.
But I write to you to tell you this:If they do it, they ought to do it very fast; they ought to make
In the US the following is going on about the book: First, a chapter from it will appear in the December Harper's (circulation about 450,000). Second, McGraw-Hill will bring out a hardcover edition. (They are the biggest publishing combine up here.) Third, at the same time, Ballantine Books will bring out a paperbound copy at 50 cents each … first printing 160,000 copies. Fourth, on December 10th at 9:30 P.M., Saturday night, I debate for one hour with A. A. Berle Jr. (former ambassador to Brazil) on the full NBC network (20 million viewers). So what started out as a little 60,000 word pamphlet is becoming a big thing, or at any rate so we hope. God knows what will happen, given the monolithic anti-Castro press and opinion in the USA. It is going to be fascinating to see.
Maybe you'll want to let Orfila know all this. I'm not writing to him; my agent is. In about one week, we'll have final page proofs from which translations will be made. Copy will go to Fondo.
Your novel hasn't come yet, but you may be sure I'll get it and read it with attention.
Also I am in touch with Evergreen Review, and when they get to me an English draft we'll edit it a bit and let them have it.
[15] Published as "C. Wright Mills on Latin America, the Left, and the U.S.: An Interview with Victor Flores Olea, Enrique Gonzales Pedrero, Carlos Fuentes, and Jaime Garcia Terres in Mexico City," Evergreen Review 5, no. 16 (January–February 1961).
[…]Salut,
W. M.
Wright Mills
Mills wrote the next letter in response to Frank Freidel's comments about Listen, Yankee. Freidel had said he thought the book would have been more effective if it had been written in Mills's voice instead of the voice of a Cuban revolutionary. Freidel had also commented that Mills didn't acknowledge the Cuban revolution's "excesses and unpleasantness."
To Frank Freidel, from West Nyack, New York, dated October 31, 1960
Dear Frank:
Thanks a lot for the quote and for the comment. You may be right about "the choice of voice"—it just wrote itself that way (and I wanted to see if I could write it that way!). In the final manuscript, now in press, I have added a lengthy essay, in my own voice, about "Cuba, Latin America and the USA." I am hopeful the final version of this will help to meet your objection.
Please know that I too see a lot of "unpleasantness" in the Cuban possibilities—but most of them, I think are being brought on by US action and inaction. And that's the point for us, isn't it?
Yours as ever,
Wright
C. Wright Mills
To James Meisel, from West Nyack, New York, dated November 24, 1960
Dear James Meisel:
Many thanks for your kind note about the books. Kind notes don't come my way often these days! I'm in the middle of this fight over Cuba and have just published a little book, Listen Yankee: The Revolution in Cuba, which no doubt is in for much clobbering. Well, no matter. One does what one must, and takes the consequences.
Again, many thanks,
Wright M.
Wright Mills
According to an FBI memo, dated November 29, 1960, Mills had recently received an anonymous letter from someone who warned that, in the words of the FBI, "an American agent disguised as a South American would assassinate him on his next visit to Cuba." The FBI report went on to say that "Mills indicated he would not be surprised if this were true since he does not doubt that the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Saul Landau remembers Mills discussing the warning, and Mills's worry that he might be attacked in his home. Mills told Saul not to tell Yaroslava about the warning, because he did not want to alarm her. In 1961 Mills made it clear to friends that he was concerned for his safety; he showed a pistol he kept by his bedside to Dan Wakefield and another friend and former student, Walter Klink.
The following is an excerpt from a letter from Mills to E. P. Thompson, written in late 1960, as it was quoted by Thompson is his essay "Remembering C. Wright Mills" in the British edition of The Heavy Dancers.
[16] (London: Merlin Press, 1985), 268–69.
(The complete letter is no longer available, so we were unable to include it in this collection.)To E. P. Thompson, from West Nyack, New York, fall 1960
"I've been running since last February, when I first went to Mexico, then Russia, then Cuba. Too much fast writing, too many decisions of moral and intellectual type, made too fast, on too little evidence. Anybody who is ‘non-communist left' today and goes into the hungry nation bloc, he's got one hell of a set of problems … Now it looks like I debate A. A. Berle … in early December on NBC national TV hook-up (9:30 Sat. night, est. audience 20 million) on ‘U.S. policy towards Latin America.' I have to do it: it's my god damned duty, because nobody else will stand up and say shit outloud, but … I know little of Latin American and have no help to get me ready for such a thing. But I have to. Then the pressure on me because of Cuba, official and unofficial, is mounting. It is very subtle and very fascinating. But also worrisome and harassing. I want to escape to reality, I want to escape to my study, I want 6 months to think and not to have to talk or write."
In a letter to Hans Gerth, dated October 13, 1960, Mills had expressed similar sentiments: "Forgive my haste but I am under quite some pressure because of the Cuba
Saul Landau was in touch with Mills during Mills's preparation for the televised debate. Landau later wrote of Mills during this time, "He was the only radical with a national reputation and a clean record (no Red connections). He was burdened by this responsibility; he worked harder as the debate neared. By early December his preparation was complete. He had enough material to write a definitive work on modern Latin America."
[17] Saul Landau, "C. Wright Mills: The Last Six Months," Ramparts (August 1965): 47.
The night before the television debate with A. A. Berle Jr.—or perhaps two nights before—Mills was at home watching The Wizard of Oz with Katie on his recently acquired first television set when he felt ill; he walked across the room and halfway upstairs before he had to stop and sit down, suffering from a severe heart attack.
Congressman Porter took Mills's place in the debate and Mills spent four days in an oxygen tent in a coma. While he was unconscious, Columbia University asked Yaroslava for permission to assign a heart specialist to give a second opinion about the treatment Mills was receiving; the specialist hired by Columbia approved of the care given by Mills's physician. Although at one point during this period the hospital staff believed that Mills was about to die, he survived. After a two-week stay, he checked himself out of the hospital against medical advice, preferring to convalesce at home.
[18] Personal communication from Yaroslava to K. Mills, September 14, 1997.
After this heart attack, Mills's doctor informed him that there were two scars on his heart and that, if he had another heart attack, he probably would die. The doctor urged him to try to avoid stress. "That's like telling me to avoid eating or breathing," Mills joked.
[19] Notation from Saul Landau to K. Mills, April 1998.
For the first time in Mills's life, he knew there was a good chance he would not live for many more years. For the remaining fifteen months of his life, the state of his health was an issue for him; in the past he had usually ignored his hypertension, or "heart nonsense" as he called it. Although he recovered enough to live and work quite actively, he did not recover all of his former strength and energy.
Several weeks after Mills's heart attack, a lawsuit was brought against him, Ballantine Books, and McGraw-Hill Book Company, alleging defamation of character and libel in a passage of Listen, Yankee: The Revolution in Cuba . The plaintiffs objected to Mills's description of their business activities in Cuba under Batista. Mills mentioned no names in his description of a financial empire allegedly
The FBI report also mentioned that in February of 1961 a person whom the House Un-American Activities Committee identified as an active member of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee had applied for a passport to Cuba in order to gather facts and documents on behalf of Mills and his publishers for their defense in the court action. The U.S. Passport Office refused to grant permission for the trip.
On January 11, 1961, FBI agents watched Mills's home as Igor Aleksandrov, from the Union of Soviet Societies for Friendship and Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, and a companion, visited from 11:01 A.M. to 2:04 P.M. The next day, Mills wrote the following note to Carlos Fuentes, in which he referred to a letter to the editor (which appeared in the January 21, 1961, issue of the Saturday Review) written by Carlos Fuentes, Enrique Gonzales Pedrero, Arnaldo Orfila Reynal, Pablo Gonzalez Casanova, and four other Mexican writers and intellectuals, who strongly defended Mills and his book Listen, Yankee in response to an extremely negative review by the journalist Jules Dubois.
To Senor Carlos Fuentes, from West Nyack, New York, dated January 12, 1961
Dear Carlos:
Forgive the brevity of this note which I am dictating; this is the first time they have let me write to anyone. Know how very grateful I am to all of you in Mexico for the wonderful letter you sent to the Saturday Review, and please convey my greetings to all.
I write to tell you that the editor of Harper's Magazine wants to consider an article by you on "The Intellectual Climate of Latin America." This might well be a real chance to get over to the half million readers of Harper's what Latin America looks like from the standpoint of our New Left. May I suggest the following: write a letter addressed to Mr. John Fischer, Harper & Brothers […] outlining in about a page or so what you think should go into a 5,000–6,000 word article on this subject. Don't pull any punches. Mail a copy of this to me and another copy to my agent, who is handling the whole deal. His name is Carl Brandt, of Brandt & Brandt. […]
[20] Mills supplied the addresses of Harper and Brothers and Brandt and Brandt.
By the way, Carl should be your agent for all sorts of things up
[21] Carlos Fuentes followed up on this advice, and Carl Brandt became his agent.
Venceremos!
[22] "We will win" or "we shall overcome."
Wright
Wright Mills
P.S. I hope that Orfila will send copies of the Spanish edition of Listen, Yankee to various U.N. people from Latin America.
To Ralph Miliband, from West Nyack, New York, dated January 25, 1961
Dear Ralph:
Forgive my long delay in responding to your letters, but this is the first day they've allowed me to use [the] typewriter; Yaro has had so much to do that I've not wanted to dictate letters to her; and to get a secretary of some sort is just too much trouble. Besides weather here has been fearful so people can't move about much with ease in suburbs.
I seem to remember that your brother-in-law or someone like that is a medical man, yes? So he can tell you as much as I once he knows the following: in mid December what hit me is known as a myocardial infarction (death of heart muscle). I suppose it was close; anyway shock and all that for a couple of days. Studies of my cardiograms, however, reveal that I must have had one previous attack which definitely caused some injury to the heart … possibly in Copenhagen in 56 or Austria in fall of 57. […]
The physical outlook then is about like this: I've two scars on the heart, the old one and the new and more serious one that is now healing. It would be best not to pick up a third. Everything goes as expected. I can now handle the stairs in the house if I take them slowly, but not allowed of course to drive a car yet. […] In two months or so, I should be quite O.K. physically: I'm not ever going to be a track star; probably can't really get into any revolutionary
What we do not know as yet is how much intellectual and moral tension I can stand without the silly heart blistering out again (think of it physically as like an inner tube of a tire). I could of course, to take the extremes: one, set up as a very scholarly boy, write and think and act narrowly with reference to, say, the society of knowledge or any number of quite useful things to study which could be studied in a scholarly and apolitical manner. The other extreme is that, for instance, Fidel keeps cabling me to come on down and convalesce in Cuba, and my friend Vallejo…a medical man of real ability, as well as head of INRA in the Oriente, says that just to step on the island will cure me! and that he has some things to talk over anyway! That's two. Of course I'll not take either one, not just yet at least, and will try over long run to become more deliberate and even-paced in work, less frenzied. In short, I can still go hunting with Tito, but I really must allow 6 months rather than 3 weeks to complete the book about it.
So we don't have to talk any more about this other than one point that bothers me greatly: I'm afraid there is going to come about a very bad time in my country for people who think as I do; and there is some reason to expect that I personally am in for quite a time. What bothers me is whether or not the damned heart will stand up to what must then be done, by way of writing and lecturing and debating. I won't here go into the reasons for my thinking I'm "going to be in for it."
In a week or so, a friend who's also a publisher and one of the best editors I know, name of Dick Fisher, will try to get into touch with you in London. Do see him. […] Dick has been the editor etc. of The Marxians. (Alas! Delayed a bit now.) Trust him and know that his word about US publishing is also well worth listening to.
I'm delighted that you may well go to the USSR in late March, except please do keep me closely informed about dates of any trips from England you take. Point is: I am probably going to come to Europe some time in late spring. […] I do not yet know. Depends in part upon [my] condition and in part upon things out of my hands at the moment. Also money. I am not teaching this spring of course and do not yet know if Columbia will pay my salary for the semester
But the really great mail is in connection with Listen, Yankee. They ask whom to contact in order to take up work in Cuba! The book in paperback has now sold about 275,000 copies, and 350,000 are in print. The Mexicans are about to come out with the Spanish edition. (My friend Carlos Fuentes, the novelist, checked the translation and writes that it really is a superb job of translation.) Feltrinelli of Italy is bringing out a routrogavure (sp?) [rotogravure] thing with it; very cheaply with pictures etc. West Germans bring out small edition. Poles are translating. The French as usual won't do nothing, but my friend, K. S. Karol, did a two-page spread in The Express of Paris and the agent there is as good as they come. Maybe the French have been busy with troubles of their own to their south; also their boy Sartre has written much on Cuba.
Anyway, let us each tell the other immediately of any hard decisions on travel.
As ever,
Mills
The following was written at the bottom of a short form letter from Yaroslava: "Thank you for your recent letter to my husband, Wright Mills, who last December suffered a myocardial infarction. Although now past any immediate crisis, he must remain at rest, and will not return to Columbia University until September 1961. Meanwhile, please forgive his not answering your letter."
To Frances and Charles Grover Mills, from West Nyack, New York, dated March 18, 1961
Dear Mother and Father:
The above is a form letter we have been using, because I just can't handle the mail I've been getting about my illness and about Listen,
I write you, Mother, to make a request. You remember that long letter you wrote me about my own childhood? Of course I still have it and I need another one from you about my grandfather, your father. I want to know the facts of his life as you remember them and I want to know the exact circumstances of his death. Also his relations with your mother. If there is someone in Lareda to whom you could write who would copy out or have Photostatted anything from the newspaper file there, perhaps an obituary notice, write to them and have them do that. I am going to use some of this stuff in a book I am going to write sometime in the next two years. A very bright idea I've had for years but guess until now didn't have the guts to do it; in the form of a series of sorta autobiographical letters to an unknown Russian intellectual, explaining to him who I am and how I got that way; and so what freedom means, because lying here these weeks and having damned near died, because this thing was pretty damned close, well it's made me much stronger and made me think about myself, which I'd not had the chance to do before. I know now that I have not the slightest fear of death; I know also that I have a big responsibility to thousands of people all over the world to tell the truth as I see it and to tell it exactly and with drama and quit this horsing around with sociological bullshit.
Anyway, you write up your father for me, will you? And don't you bullshit me. Get it straight.
C. G.: I've now got a .30–30 Winchester; a .22 squirrel gun with a 4-power scope on it; and a wonderful MI 30 carbine…like was used in the Pacific war …weighs only 4 pounds and throws a slug
[23] When Mills was young, he and his father used to go hunting together in Texas.
Am in the market for a shotgun now or maybe two or three of them. Do you ever use yours? What kind is it? Do you want to sell it? If so, how much [do] you want?Your son,
Charleswright
To Harvey and Bette Swados, from West Nyack, New York, undated (early 1961)
Dear Harvey and Bette:
Forgive my not writing to you for so long but first I was busy breaking my heart and then allowing the silly thing to mend. Things still in slow motion as it were but I feel very virtuous now: weight is of the sort one might call controlled appearance; I do not smoke and feel no need to do so. Just a matter of keeping deliberate rather than frenzied, and being protected from the world for a bit longer. Should be quite OK by late April to do damned near anything or rather face damned near anything, although heart has two scars: one from fall of 1957 in Austria. Must have occurred in sleep.
But what I write to say is that Harvey is not to allow the shitliberal types of reviews […] to bother him or hurt him. They are inevitable: would be same if book being reviewed were half blank paper or great American novel. It is a good book [Nights in the Gardens of Brooklyn (1961)],
[24] When the collected short stories of Harvey Swados were published in 1986, with an introduction by Robin Swados, the title was also Nights in the Gardens of Brooklyn
especially the title story, so fuck them all.good bye,
Wright
[P.S.] Everything goes well. Venceremos.
W.
To Walter Klink, from West Nyack, New York, dated March 13, 1961
Dear Walter:
Do, by all means, plan to come out when you can, phoning Yaro a day or so ahead.
Yes, perhaps more people than one might believe share my view of Cuba, or at least are capable of listening to it with attention; we've sold over 370,000 now and are considering another large printing.
But the one thing I have learned from the entire experience is a terrible thing: that the moral cowardice of the American intelligentsia is virtually complete. I don't of course mean that they should agree with me, but I do demand that they face the moral ambiguity, indeed agony is not too strong a word, which any violence involves. This is what you are talking about in your letter: I agree with you fully about that, even tho I have never to my knowledge killed anyone. In LY, which more and more I come to see as a pivotal book for me, and not merely a pamphlet, I do confront this ambiguity. The critics, as in Dissent and in Encounter, are cowards: they will not even confront it; they take the easy way out. I am extremely embittered at this, and even more embittered that I should allow such cowards to waste my energy in mere bitterness when there are so many real problems to solve.
My heart disease "comes and goes" in a rather irritating way, and I have not been able even to read in any systematic way, much less write. Often I can only lie all day and think in unsystematic ways … which hasn't happened since 1934 at Texas A and M after I'd contracted out of the whole freshman class. But then, in the end, one way or another, time is an enormous force.
See you soon as you like and have the time.
W
Wright
P.S.: The International Sociological Association meeting at Washington in Sept. 62 has asked me to give an address to the First Plenary Session, and I have agreed to do so. Since there are only two such papers, and I'm [the] only American, you can see what this means!
During the week before the next letter was written, the New York Times ran the following front-page headlines about Cuba: "US Urges Castro to Cut His Ties with Communism; Would Aid a Free Regime: Cuba Is Warned" (April 4, 1961); "Castro Minister Says US Wages Undeclared War" (April 6, 1961); "Anti-Castro Units Trained to Fight at Florida Bases: Force There and in Central America Is Reported to Total 5,000 to 6,000" (April 7, 1961); and "Top US Advisors in Dispute on Aid to Castro's Foes: Kennedy Getting Conflicting Views from CIA, Rusk, and Pentagon Aides; Intervention Is Feared; Some Urge Military Help, but President Bars Use of American Troops" (April 11, 1961). The important point was that groups of Cuban exiles were being recruited and trained in the United States for the invasion at the Bay of Pigs, and, as I. F. Stone pointed out, this was a violation of neutrality laws.
[25] "The Press on the New Frontier," I. F. Stone's Weekly 9, no. 26 (10 July 1961): 2. All of the issues of I. F. Stone's Weekly that are quoted in this volume were among the periodicals Mills had saved in his personal papers.
When Fidel Castro's foreign minister, Raul Roa, stated that the United States was formalizing its undeclared war against Cuba, he was referring to the support and training of troops as well as a pamphlet released by the State Department. The pamphlet promised full support for "future democratic governments in Cuba," urging the Castro regime to break links with Communist countries and warning that if this were not done, the United States felt confident that the Cuban people would fight for a free Cuba in keeping with a vision of "inter-American unity."
[26] "Text of the State Department's Document Denouncing Castro Regime in Cuba," New York Times, 4 April 1961, late ed., p. 14.
In the next letter, Mills responds to a comment from Hazel Erskine about a morale problem. Hazel had been active in civil rights and social reform issues since she moved to Nevada in 1947. She was a founder of the Nevada chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
To Hazel Gaudet Erskine, from West Nyack, New York, dated April 11, 1961
Dear Hazel:
Thanks for your letter. I've secured a leave from the university for the next academic year and with all the family will spend it wandering in Europe: north and south, east and west.
I have begun a play, "The Fey Tiger," I call it now; it is set in Yugoslavia and my ambition is to go goat hunting with Tito.
We are well over 450,000 copies in paper of Listen, Yankee. Huge Spanish edition is now out, and I am happy to say, in Spanish there are several pirated editions floating around. As you will know if you've read most recent reports on the matter, Listen Yankee is still right on the ball. […] It does help now and then to have a little bit of historical reality on your side, doesn't it now?
The morale problem you refer to is damned real; that's why, in all truth, I wander in Europe next year—to keep from thinking about what's happening in the world. But with me you know the morale problem is also a moral problem. I'd much rather be dead than to have to live in half a dozen ways of which I can think. I know that now. Anyway, in the end, everyone who's free has to live, and die, as he must. No one can do much about it.
Yours as ever,
Wright
On April 17, 1961, Cuban exile troops, supported by the United States, invaded the Bay of Pigs, Cuba. Cuban residents did not join them in an uprising, and Castro's forces defeated the invaders in seventy-two hours. After this debacle, U.S. Representative Frank Kowalski (D-Conn.) proposed negotiating with Castro. In comments largely ignored by the national press, but faithfully reported by I. F. Stone's Weekly, Representative Kowalski said, "The counterrevolution failed because it had no roots in Cuba. It failed because it had no appeal for the farmer and the worker. … Whatever Americans may think of Castro, he is nonetheless a living example of a successful revolutionist. … He has maintained himself in Cuba because he fans the great pride of Cubans in Cuba and in themselves."
[27] I. F. Stone's Weekly 9, no. 17 (8 May 1961): 3.
Six days after the Bay of Pigs invasion, Mills wrote the next letter to his parents, referring to his mother's image of Mexicans. When Frances was a child on a ranch in Texas, Mexican domestic workers helped to take care of her and taught her to speak Spanish; she had fond memories of them and a continuing respect for Mexican culture.
To Frances and Charles Grover Mills, from West Nyack, New York, dated April 23, 1961
Dear Mother and Dad,
I have your letters of April 18 and April 21. You must forgive me for not having answered you sooner or writing more frequently. But I have been ill and full of spleen and also in the middle of fighting the criminal activities of the Kennedy administration against Cuba. My mother will understand this, for although she has never seen Cuba I know that she has—as her image of the human being—the men and women of Mexico. The Cubans are my Mexicans.
I leave early in the morning with Katy to address a rally in London. Yaroslava and Nikolas follow me on 15 May.
I am mailing to you the picture of the "Old Maid." You may, of course, keep it. In return you must write as soon as you possibly can your memories of my grandfather Bragg Wright. I have three pictures of him now, which I have turned over to a trusted friend who is having them reproduced by expert photographers, and you will receive good copies of all three very shortly. Probably I shall use one of them as the jacket for a book I am writing called "Contacting the Enemy."
You must not worry merely because your son, your daughter, and your grandchildren are in Europe and Asia for the year. We have many friends and we shall be well taken care of. Also you should plan to visit us for two or three weeks—perhaps in December. Would you prefer Italy or Tashkent? Let me know. […]
Con un abrazo revolucionario,
[28] "With a revolutionary embrace."
Wright Mills
Meanwhile the FBI was watching Mills's movements. In a memo in the FBI file on Mills, dated April 25, 1961, a federal agent noted Mills's plan to participate in the rally in London about the Cuban situation. As far as we know he did speak at the rally after arriving in London.
By June the Millses and Saul Landau were in the Swiss Alps, in a chalet called La Violette, where they stayed for a month.
Harvey and Bette Swados and their three children, Marco, Felice, and Robin, were living in the south of France when Mills wrote the next letter.
To Harvey and Bette Swados, from Switzerland, dated June 13, 1961
Dear Harvey and Bette:
It's extraordinary that you should be talking about staying in Europe "forever" just when we are very seriously considering just that. Please keep this absolutely confidential for the time being but I have been offered two professorships in England
[29] One offer was from the University of Sussex at Brighton; we don't have information about the other.
and I am considering them very seriously.Our plans are not yet definite, although we will be at this address until July 2 or 3. […] After early July, we will probably wander slowly through Berlin and Warsaw to Moscow in our caravan/bus and I will spend a month or so in a Soviet heart clinic. I feel generally okay physically except that I must "push" myself to get anything done: I seem to have "stabilized" at a rather mediocre level, and on the basis of a lot of dope for my heart, which I would like to kick.
Perhaps in September or early October we will settle for a while in England. […]
Sometime in the winter I am going for a month to Cuba;
[30] As it turned out, he did not take that trip.
meanwhile I have just mailed a 60-page update of Listen, Yankee for the 5th American printing and the 3rd Mexican printing in September. We are touching the ½ million mark [of copies sold] in the USA and want to give the thing a shot in the arm. I am hard at work now on the Marxians,[31] Published as The Marxists (New York: Dell, 1962).
and hope to have it out of the way in 10 days or so. Then everything will be clear for the "Contacting the Enemy" book,[32] "Tovarich: Contacting the Enemy" (see selected letters to Tovarich in this book).
on which I will be at work until about Xmas. (No data! No files!)Meanwhile: I have never been so depressed about the obfuscation and the apparent realities of the USA. I think it's time for all of us to move out.
Yours as ever,
Mills
Here's Yara:
We're in a fantastic Swiss-Victorian villa with a spectacular view (when the fog lifts) that a friend of W's [Wright's] loaned us preseason. It's 2 miles up a cowpath from the road; what a din the cows' bells make on their way to summer pasture. The other day the Swiss army marched by and said something to me in French and began firing big guns nearby. Otherwise things are very peaceful. […] I have learned to tend fires (there's still skiing up here) and at 6 A.M. I start the kitchen woodstove. There's a big boiler always going, full of diapers.
[33] Nik was one year old at the time.
[…] Katie is beaming with health, having acquired Swiss red cheeks. There are 5 kids who belong to the caretaker (ages 9 months to 7) and they have absolutely no trouble despite language difference. The fields are full of such wonderful flowers; Katie keeps our house filled with color. It's really an ideal resting place, if one was the type to be able to do so … […]Sincerely hope we will be seeing you, if W can be convinced to visit the "decadent coast." Right now we all long for a bit of warm sun …
Much much love to all,
Yara
According to Saul Landau, who assisted Mills on the project, Mills reworked the manuscript for The Marxists three times during his month in the Swiss Alps.
In June 1961, Mills and Landau went to Paris and had lunch with Jean Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir,
[34] In a posthumously published review of Simone de Beauvoir's book Second Sex (1953), Mills wrote, "Mlle. de Beauvoir's solution to the man-woman problem, put in its briefest form, is the elimination of woman as we know her—with which one might agree, but to which one must add: and the elimination of man as we know him. There would then be male and female and each would be equally free to become an independent human being. No one can know what new types of human beings would be developed in this historically unique situation, but perhaps in sharing Mlle. de Beauvoir's passion for liberty we would all gladly forego femininity and masculinity to achieve it; and perhaps the best types would follow Coleridge's adage and become androgynous characters in an androgynous world." "Women: The Darling Little Slaves" in Power, Politics, and People: The Collected Essays of C. Wright Mills.
and K. S. Karol, who translated for Mills and Sartre. De Beauvoir spoke English. In de Beauvoir's memoir she wrote about their meeting:"Mills's book White Collar had opened the way for all the subsequent studies of American society today. Les Temps Modernes had published long extracts from another of his books, The Power Elite. Bright-eyed, bearded, he said to me gaily: ‘We have the same enemies,' reeling off the names of certain American critics who didn't have much use for me. […] C. Wright Mills was popular in Cuba. […] Like us, he was wondering what was happening there at the moment. The Communist Party was providing the regime with an administrative framework that it had lacked, true enough; unfortunately, it contained within its ranks a clique, led by Anibal Escalante—whom we had thought a pompous imbecile in February 1960—whose sectarianism and opportunism were threatening to force the Castroist revolution into a blind alley."
[35] Force of Circumstance, translated from the French by Richard Howard (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1964), 589–90.
Landau wrote that, although Mills agreed that the direction of Cuba's future would be toward the Soviet bloc, he held out some hope that Cuban leaders would be able to preserve a measure of originality. The discussion ended with general agreement that the antagonistic U.S. Cold War policies were to be damned for forcing Cuba into the Soviet camp.
[36] Landau, "C. Wright Mills," 49–50.
In the following hurried letter to Ian Ballantine, Mills referred to his trip to Paris, without mentioning his meeting with Sartre and de Beauvoir.
To Ian Ballantine, from Switzerland, dated June 27, 1961
Dear Ian:
I have just returned from Paris, for a brief rest, to find your letter of 22 June—rather than a clean draft of the update material for Listen, Yankee. This is very disappointing. […] The Mexican printers are literally waiting, having delayed one month to receive it before printing. Such details as exactly when you print, or whether it should be cut in half, or whether it should be put in question and answer form vs. straight prose—all that is a detail. It can be fixed, or rather could have been fixed, in one morning's work, once I saw it clean. Now I do not know what to do if copies don't come by the third of July. I leave here about then. I tried hard to get an English language secretary in Geneva, but can't. So:
The only thing I can do is ask you once more: please send to me as soon as you can copies of the material I sent to you. Follow it with any
Here, so far as I know them, are [my] addresses. None of them is reliable after I leave here. That is why I wrote you such an urgent letter and that is why I worked my ass off finishing up a rough draft during the month of June.
Between 24th and 30th of July:
Care Adam Schaff
Univerisytetu, Warszawaskiego
Warszaw, […]
Poland
Month of August:
Care Igor Alexandrov
Soviet Friendship Societies
[…]
Moscow USSR
[…]
Wright Mills
In August 1961 Mills, Saul Landau, Yaroslava, Kate, and Nik spent several weeks traveling by Volkswagen camping bus. The trip took them from Switzerland to Austria and Germany. After a week in Poland they made the risky three-day drive to Moscow, with Landau at the wheel, taking the undulating highway through mostly unpopulated areas in Byelorussia. Few people drove that route in those days.
Mills was highly ambivalent about what he found in Russia. Landau quotes Mills as saying that the Soviets "have done away with some of the state machinery and replaced it by perhaps even more rigid societal controls, an old technique. […] They have started to organize an industrially advanced, technologically based society, and returned to a primitive kind of law and control." At a dinner party in Moscow that included many Soviet officials and many toasts with vodka, Mills upset his host when he said, "Here is to the day when the complete works of Trotsky are published and widely distributed in the Soviet Union. On that day the USSR will have achieved democracy."
[37] Ibid., 52.
Landau (who left Moscow before the Millses) commented that Soviet society both inspired and depressed Mills. Some progress was being achieved, but Mills
When Mills visited the publishers of the Russian translation of The Power Elite, he asked for royalties from that edition. The Russian publishers initially refused, but Mills energetically insisted on receiving payment, and he succeeded in obtaining a sum of rubles.
[38] Personal communication from Yara Mills to K. Mills, March 1996.
Mills's American doctor had told him about a Soviet sanitarium in Crimea
[39] On a peninsula in the Black Sea.
that specialized in heart disease and might offer hope for Mills's own scarred heart. For more information, Mills visited a polyclinic in Moscow but was not pleased with what he found out. As a patient his diet would be severely restricted. Smoking, alcohol, and lovemaking were prohibited. He would be isolated from his family, who would be allowed in only for visits. After the Soviet doctors explained their rules, Mills quickly made his exit and drove to Leningrad, where he and the family boarded a ship, the Baltika,[40] A turboelectric ship run by the USSR Baltic state steamship line.
sailing to London. While onboard they stayed in a private suite with their VW camping bus secured to the deck nearby—accommodations obtained with the rubles from the Russian publisher of The Power Elite.The Millses were settled, temporarily at least, in London by September.
To Ian Ballantine, from London, England, dated October 2, 1961
Dear Ian:
I have your good letter of 29 Sept. with the enclosure from Deutscher, for which many thanks. The present letter does not require any answer, as we'll be meeting soon. You may show it to Carl Brandt if you should see him before coming over. I want, as it were, to think out loud on paper a little bit, in order to let you know how matters stand, and thus to impose upon you once more.
Usually when you are confronted with a decision, you don't really decide if you take very long about it. You've begun to drift to one side or the other and in the back of your mind, somewhere, you know what the answer is going to be. You seek advice and look for evidence merely to firm up this already-made decision. But about moving to England this is not the case. For a day or so at a time, I'll "really" decide
There are two broad levels of consideration: First, the personal, which at least in the past has always boiled down to: what are the conditions under which I can do the best work? Second, the practical, which in this case means such things as the financial question, the difficulty of moving, and so on. On each of these levels there are many factors, and each is full of unknowns. Fortunately for us all, Yaroslava does not enter into it one way or the other, as she has already demonstrated that she can be happy in either place, or in any place, with the minimum amenities, and she is capable of coping without undue strain with the practical side of things.
On the practical side, which is less important but nonetheless there, there is little doubt now that we should lose quite a bit in standard of living by moving. Not only would I make less money, after taxes and before, but the chances to earn money would be less here, and I would take a really bad financial beating by the move itself.
On the personal side: the risk of not doing good work in the US has to do with unmanageable tensions arising there for me. In England it has to do with a whole set of unknowns. The fact that I've not settled down to work here yet means little or nothing in view of the decision to be made and the fact that I've not got my library and files, my little apparatus for thinking, here with me. So England really is an unknown. One thing is clear to me: the similarity of the language is misleading. This is a foreign country to me.
But enough. Will be seeing you soon, and will not make any decision until after we have a talk.
My best to all.
[unsigned copy]
Mills's physical distance from the United States was not creating a sense of detachment or calm. Saul Landau later wrote that when he bought the New York Times
[41] Landau, "C. Wright Mills," 53.
To Frances and Charles Grover Mills, from London, England, dated October 17, 1961
Dear Mother and Dad:
I have decided to return to the United States and to Columbia, probably sailing around the first of the year, although not teaching again until next Sept. The decision has less to do with the many attractions of England than with the fact that my argument lies in America and has to be worked out there. You carry it with you and after all it is your damned duty. […]
Maybe, I don't know, I may go along for a short visit to Mexico in the spring. Lonesome for it somehow.
M.
In December 1961, the Millses went to Haut de Cagnes, Cagnes-sur-Mer, France, renting an apartment for a month and visiting the Swados family. Mills and Harvey Swados took long walks and had long arguments—mostly about Cuba.
When Mills left France and returned to the United States in January 1962, he faced a number of problems. The multimillion-dollar libel lawsuit concerning a passage in Listen, Yankee could not be postponed forever. The New York Office of the FBI reported that the time for Mills and his publishers to answer the complaint had been extended repeatedly since April 1961 through the date of the FBI memo, December 11, 1961. The FBI file also documented that the defense efforts had been hampered by lack of cooperation from the U.S. Passport Office. The lawsuit had the potential of ruining Mills financially. (He was already flat broke due to his travels in Europe the previous year, when he had spent advances for books he had not yet written.)
In the public arena, the issue Mills faced was the course of the Cuban revolution. On December 1, 1961, Fidel Castro had given a five-hour speech in which he declared himself a Marxist-Leninist and praised the accomplishments of the Soviet Union. At a conference in Uruguay, the Organization of American States responded
[42] "President Orders a Total Embargo on Cuban Imports," New York Times, 4 February 1962, sec. 1, p. 1.
On one level Mills was not surprised by Fidel Castro's statements in response to offers of friendship from the USSR—in the face of consistent hostility from the United States—but Mills had gone out on a political limb to present the Cuban revolutionaries' viewpoint to American readers, partly because he believed that, given favorable circumstances, Cuba could develop an independent type of socialism. Using information obtained from personal interviews with Castro and other Cuban leaders in August 1960, Mills had written in Listen, Yankee that, as of mid-1960, the leading men of the Cuban government were not Communists in the sense of the word— party members—in which Mills understood it.
[43] Ballantine edition, 180.
Although the degree of political independence that Castro expressed vis-à-vis the USSR waxed and waned in subsequent years, he seemed to be clearly in the Soviet camp as of early 1962. Mills remained irate about U.S. policies toward Cuba, but with the Cold War raging, Castro's declarations of allegiance to Marxism-Leninism and admiration for the Soviet Union put Mills in an increasingly difficult position in the United States.In addition to Mills's increased political isolation and the multimillion-dollar libel lawsuit against him, he had to cope with his worsening heart disease.
To Ralph and Marion Miliband, from West Nyack, New York, dated March 16, 1962
Dear Ralph and Marion:
This is the first day I've written anything to anybody but now I begin to answer some mail. I am quite all right. I do not drink at all; it turns out that had something to do with a very heavy deficiency in vitamin B something or other, which has now been corrected. They still fool around a bit with my blood chemistry. But please do not worry about
Let us know ahead of time when you are in NY and where and when I can pick you up to come out for as long as you have available. I am sorry to say that I don't feel up to attending meetings of any sort, although perhaps Leo and Paul would care to come out some afternoon or for lunch as well.
[44] Leo Huberman and Paul Sweezy coauthored a book entitled Socialism in Cuba (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969).
See you soon.
As ever,
Wright
On March 20, 1962, at the age of forty-five, Mills died of a heart attack in his home.
A memorial service was held at a Quaker Meeting at the Fellowship of Reconciliation in Nyack. Mills had had a strong respect for the Quakers and the Fellowship of Reconciliation, an international, interfaith organization dedicated to fostering active nonviolence, peace, and justice. At the memorial service mourners shared a meditative silence; some kept the silence throughout the service and others rose to speak of Mills or to read aloud from his books. At the request of Mills's mother, Frances, a memorial service was held in a local Roman Catholic church.
At a memorial meeting held at Columbia University, Hans Gerth said that Mills
packed several lives into one. […] His was an open ended "vie experimentale," a way of life, of risks and ventures, of essays and of thrusts held together by extraordinary hard and sustained work of mind and body under stress. […]
His impressive and imaginative trilogy on labor and middle classes, old and new, and on the decision makers in world affairs was the first attempt of an American sociologist to answer the question, whence did we come, where are we going, who are we? […]
He has traversed the course of his life with the tempestuousness of a swift runner. Death struck him down. I have lost my friend, as the Romans used to say, my "alter ego." Requiescas in Pace.
[45] "On the Passing of C. Wright Mills," Berkeley Journal of Sociology 7, no. 1 (spring 1962): 1, 4, 5.
Messages of condolence and grief arrived by the dozens from readers, colleagues, and friends. I. F. Stone telegrammed Yaroslava Mills to say, "Terribly sorry. We are all impoverished by the death of your wonderful and courageous husband." Erich
A reader of Mills's work wrote that Mills's death gave him "a feeling of great personal loss. Although I never met him, I had always looked forward to the possibility of doing so, and he has exercised considerable influence upon my intellectual development. … [He was] a representative of the best tradition of American scholarship and intellectual independence."
[46] Letter from Louis Jones to Mrs. [Yara] Mills, dated March 22, 1962.
Harvey Swados, who was still in Cagnes-sur-Mer, France, at the time, and who had known Mills for twenty-one years, wrote, "What can I say. I have nobody to argue with now. Mills knew always that there was something that held us together no matter how we argued. Or maybe because we argued. This foolish little town will never be the same. Nor will any place that Mills was, even briefly."
[47] Letter from Harvey Swados to Yara Mills, dated March 21, 1962.
Mills's grave is in the shade of an enormous oak tree in the Oak Hill Cemetery in Nyack, New York. When Ralph and Marion Miliband visited Yaroslava after Mills's death, Ralph helped choose the epitaph for the gravestone—words written by Mills:
I have tried to be objective. I do not claim to be detached.
[48] The Marxists (New York: Dell Publishing, 1962), 10.
Later that spring Miliband wrote the following about his American friend:
C. Wright Mills cannot be neatly labeled and cataloged. He never belonged to any party or faction; he did not think of himself as a "Marxist"; he had the most profound contempt for orthodox Social Democrats and for closed minds in the Communist world. He detested smug liberals and the kind of radical whose response to urgent and uncomfortable choices is hand wringing. He was a man on his own, with both the strength and also the weakness which go with that solitude. He was on the Left, but not of the Left, a deliberately lone guerrilla, not a regular soldier. He was highly organized, but unwilling to be organized, with self-discipline the only discipline he could tolerate. He had friends rather than comrades. Despite all this, perhaps because of it, he occupied a unique position in American radicalism […] and his death leaves a gaping void. In a trapped and inhumane world, he taught what it means to be a free and humane intellect. "Get on with it," he used to say. "Work." So, in his spirit, let us.
[49] Ralph Miliband, "C. Wright Mills," New Left Review (May–June 1962). Reprinted in G. William Domhoff and Hoyt B. Ballard, comps., C. Wright Mills and the Power Elite (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), 11.