To the Editor:

Things have now gone too far.

Your reviewer, Deborah Mason - identified as an editor for Vogue magazine - included in her review of ''Paris Trout'' a reference to a book I wrote earlier, ''Deadwood,'' recalling its setting as the place where Wild Bill Hickok ''coupled with Calamity Jane.''

Admittedly, Bill Hickok - both in life and in my novel - was on the slide during his brief stay in Deadwood. He was depressed, drunk most of the time, going blind from venereal disease and haunted by premonitions of his own murder and the fear that he had given his disease to his new wife - the famous circus performer and horsewoman Alice Lake. Now that I think about it, those two fears were probably connected.

So Bill had sunk a long way, but certainly not far enough to ''couple'' with the unbathed and homely poseur Jane Canary, a real appetite killer if there ever was one.

Granted, life is unfair. But while you could call getting shot through the back of the head at the card table of your favorite saloon the breaks of the game, getting bushwhacked 112 years later in The New York Times is simply cruel and unusual punishment.

Maybe not entirely unusual.

At any rate, please cancel our subscriptions (Bill Hickok's and my own) to Vogue. PETE DEXTER Sacramento, Calif.
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