An ATLANTICcontributor whose short stories and articles have appeared in many magazines, Tom Mayer now lives in Mexico, where he is working on a novel. The winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship last spring, he is, at the age of twenty-one, one of the youngest American authors ever selected for this honor.
Roughly half of this year's entering freshman class will become dropouts during the next four years. For some,it will be an intellectual and economic disaster. For others, like New Mexico's Tom Mayer, who left Harvard after two years,it will mean time for writing, self-education, and re-evaluation of the university experience. Mr. Mayer's first volume of short stories, BUBBLE GUM AND KIPLING, was published last fall.