C. Wright Mills: Letters And Autobiographical Writings

C. WRIGHT MILLS Letters and Autobiographical Writings C. WRIGHT MILLS Letters and Autobiographical Writings Edited by Kathryn Mills with Pamela Mills Introduction by Dan Wakefield University of California Press Berkeley Los Angeles London Letters and writings by C. Wright Mills © 2000 by Yaroslava Surmach Mills Compilation and annotations © 2000 by Kathryn and Pamela Mills Introduction © 2000 by Dan Wakefield “Remembrance” © 2000 by Kathryn Mills “My Father Haunts Me” © 2000 by Pamela Mills Epigraphs from “C. Wright Mills: Islander Exploring Main Street,” Columbia Alumni News 42, no. 3 (December 1950): 18. “On Intellectual Craftsmanship,” in The Sociological Imagination by C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959), 226. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mills, C. Wright (Charles Wright), 1916–1962. [Selections. 2000] Letters and autobiographical writings / C. Wright Mills ; edited by Kathryn Mills with Pamela Mills. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-520-21106-5 (alk. paper) 1. Mills, C. Wright (Charles Wright), 1916–1962— Correspondence. 2. Mills, C. Wright (Charles Wright), 1916–1962. 3. Sociologists—United States—Biography. I. Mills, Kathryn, 1955– . II. Mills, Pamela, 1943– . III. Title. HM479.M55A3 2000 301'.092—dc21 [B] 99-29106 CIP Manufactured in the United States of America 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper). 8 For C. Wright Mills’s son, Nikolas, and for Mills’s grandchildren, Carlos, Paulo, Pedro, and Eric Mills strides excitedly up and down the room. . . . He pauses to glare at his towering bookcase. “It’s a writer’s responsibility to orient modern publics to the catastrophic world in which they live,” he says. “But he cannot do this if he remains a mere specialist. To do it at all, he’s got to do it big!” —Columbia Alumni News Do not allow public issues as they are o‹cially formulated, or troubles as they are privately felt, to determine the problems that you take up for study. Above all, do not give up your moral and political autonomy by accepting in somebody else’s terms the illiberal practicality of the bureaucratic ethos or the liberal practicality of the moral scatter. Know that many personal troubles cannot be solved merely as troubles, but must be understood in terms of public issues—and in terms of the problems of history-making. Know that the human meaning of public issues must be revealed by relating them to personal troubles— and to the problems of the individual life. Know that the problems of social science, when adequately formulated, must include both troubles and issues, both biography and history, and the range of their intricate relations. Within that range the life of the individual and the making of societies occur; and within that range the sociological imagination has its chance to make a di¤erence in the quality of human life in our time. —C. Wright Mills The Sociological Imagination CONTENTS P R E FA C E xi REMEMBRANCE Kathryn Mills xvii M Y FAT H E R H A U N T S M E Pamela Mills xxi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xxv INTRODUCTION Dan Wakefield I. GROWING UP IN TEXAS 1916–1939 II. 37 S TA RT I N G O U T College Park, Maryland, 1941–1945 I V. 19 G R A D U AT E S T U D I E S Madison, Wisconsin, 1939–1941 III. 1 45 TA K I N G I T B I G New York, New York, 1945–1956 91 V. AN AMERICAN ABORIGINAL GOES ABROAD