Part of the purpose of the visit, coming at the end of a book tour that has taken him around the world, was to celebrate Mr. Rushdie's cautious but determined return to public life. As he has taken to putting it, if he allows himself to be silenced by bullies, the bullies will have won.

So on Monday night, Mr. Rushdie was the guest of honor at a dinner attended by some 75 admirers and friends -- ranging from Joan Didion and Tina Brown to David Byrne and Lou Reed. Over cannelloni and asparagus, amid pale pink roses, with the restaurant staff lining the back wall to listen, Mr. Rushdie was warmly welcomed back.

"It felt like some kind of renewal, some kind of turning of the page, the beginning of a new phase," he said yesterday as his new book went on sale across the city. "What can I tell you? It's nice to have a hit."

Yesterday began early for Mr. Rushdie, with an interview on "Good Morning America," which, for security reasons, his publicists had insisted not be advertised in advance. So Mr. Rushdie seemed to materialize mysteriously among such featured segments as an installment of Joan Lunden's series on fitness.

Chatting with the host, Charlie Gibson, Mr. Rushdie ruminated on such matters as whether confinement dulls the imagination. If the upside of hiding was that he had mastered Super Mario Brothers, he said, the curse of freedom is being dogged by the same mediocre movie playing on every plane.