RUSHDIE’S EXILE

Having not read Gore Vidal’s “Live From Golgotha,” I can pass no judgment on Uri Dowbenko’s statement (Letters, Oct. 18) that Vidal merits being exiled into “the darkness of a well-deserved obscurity with Salman Rushdie and other literary pretenders of the 20th Century.”

However, I can tell you this: Salman Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses” is one of the most joyous, memorable, astounding, and beautiful novels I have ever read. And it is in the text of this masterpiece that Rushdie prophetically (and sadly) pens: “Exile is a dream of glorious return.”

THOMAS COONEY

SHERMAN OAKS