Mr. Hoffman, 45, would not fit the Hollywood image of a sophisticated art thief. A New Jersey native, he moved to Kingston about 20 years ago and now makes his living doing odd jobs such as "picking up someone's garbage or junk," as the message on his cell phone announces.

And if you asked him, he'd say he wasn't a thief at all.

"[Mr. Rieff] pointed out the stuff he wanted moved, and as for any of the rest of it, he said I should bring it to the dump or keep it for myself," Mr. Hoffman said in a telephone interview last year. That stuff included dozens of paintings, framed photographs and boxes filled with books and other mementos that Mr. Rieff had placed in storage after the deaths of his parents, Sontag in 2004 and Rieff earlier in 2006.

"I kept this painting because I liked the way it looked, and an old pair of binoculars and a couple of books," Mr. Hoffman said.

Yet if Mr. Hoffman had simply liked the painting-had taken it home, hung it over his fireplace and admired it while sipping cocoa-he may, in fact, not find himself in the position he's currently in: under investigation by the F.B.I. Agents are looking into not only how Mr. Hoffman gained possession of the painting, but also whether he may be the first person in memory to have hood-winked Sotheby's into auctioning an allegedly stolen piece of art on his own behalf.

As it turns out, Mr. Rieff, through his lawyers F. Gant McCloud and David Glynn, denies that Mr. Hoffman was ever told that he could take anything from the storage units; Mr. Hoffman was told he should discard some cardboard boxes filled with old newspapers and a few pieces of broken furniture, but that was it.

AFTER STORING THE painting for a couple of months in a shed outside his home, Mr. Hoffman decided to try to sell it. His first order of business was to determine its value, so he secured an appointment with an appraiser in New York, whom he had seen on a TV show about antiques. The appraiser, whose name Mr. Hoffman does not remember, told him the painting, made in 1769, was an original by Ramsay, who specialized in painting portraits of the British upper class. The appraiser also said the painting was in good condition.

Mr. Hoffman's next step was to set up an appointment at Sotheby's; in March or April 2007, he brought the painting to the auction house's New York headquarters. There, according to Sotheby's officials, the painting was inspected by the lead specialist in older British paintings.

Of course, Sotheby's had to take steps to ensure that the painting was, in fact, Mr. Hoffman's. According to Sotheby's spokeswoman Diana Phillips, Mr. Hoffman would have been asked the circum-stances of his ownership of the painting and to provide any documentation to prove it. A Sotheby's official, who asked not to be identified because of the ongoing criminal investigation, said Mr. Hoffman told the auction house's inspector that the painting had been in his family's possession "for some time," but that he had no documentation to attest to the ownership.

In an interview, Mr. Hoffman insisted he said no such thing to Sotheby's. He said that he told the Sotheby's inspector how Mr. Rieff had given him permission to take the painting a few months before. He added that he was asked to sign an agreement with Sotheby's that attested to his being the proper owner of the painting and agreeing to compensate the auction house if it were later proven that he had defrauded it.

Sotheby's spokeswoman Ms. Phillips, however, said that the auction house would have immediately contacted Mr. Rieff if Mr. Hoffman had told its inspector of how he had gotten possession of the painting. In fact, Mr. Rieff had already contracted with Sotheby's to sell some of the other valuables belonging to his late father, Mr. Rieff said in a telephone interview.

THE ART WORLD has long lacked a universal or even commonly accepted way of proving ownership of lesser paintings. While a masterpiece will possess a "provenance" that will detail the history of its ownership, auction houses and galleries are often asked to sell works valued at under $1 million with the barest of documentation. Still, the one step that every major auction house and most gal-leries will take before putting any piece up for bids is to check with the Art Loss Register.

With offices in New York, London and four other European cities, the register maintains a database with the identities of more than 100,000 paintings and other works of art that have been listed as stolen by their owners. Sotheby's officials stated that the auction house checked with the register to determine if the Ramsay was listed either as missing or stolen. But since Mr. Rieff was unaware that the painting was missing until contacted by a reporter more than a year later, it was not listed on the register's database of stolen pieces.

So the auction would go on. To take advantage of the portrait's having been painted by an English master, Sotheby's decided to have it auctioned at its New Bond Street office in London on June 6, 2007. According to the Sotheby's catalog for the auction of 100 or so "Important British Paintings," as the collection was called, the Ramsay was expected to draw between $25,000 and $35,000, as the painting, held in a gilt wood frame, seemed to have weathered the two centuries in relatively good shape.

"The canvas has been lined. The painting is stable and is in need of no further attention," potential bidders were informed by the catalog. "Examination under ultraviolet light reveals a thick var-nish which obscures a clear reading. There is evidence of some repaint along the lower right hand portion of the painted oval. There is evidence of some retouching in the sitter's face. It is not possi-ble to penetrate the varnish layer with ultraviolet light, but there would appear to be evidence of older retouching in the background and in the sitter's face."

Mr. Hoffman decided to attend the auction to see what fruit his painting might bear. With his 70-year-old mother beside him, Mr. Hoffman flew to London to watch as the 18th-century portrait, which documents would later show had been owned by Mr. Rieff's father since 1970, was auctioned off.

Mr. Hoffman recalls there being a brief flurry of bids coming in over the phone, with the winner at $47,000.

"It was pretty exciting being there, watching the whole thing," he recalled. After Sotheby's took its customary 15 percent commission, the auction house mailed him a check for about $39,000, Mr. Hoffman said. He used the money "to fix up a few things around the house."

THE F.B.I. INVESTIGATION will provide the last word on whether the painting was rightfully Mr. Hoffman's to sell, but others have disputed Mr. Hoffman's version of events.

Two men who assisted Mr. Hoffman with moving Mr. Rieff's valuables from the two Kingston-area storage units did not remember Mr. Hoffman's ever getting permission to take anything from the self-storage units for himself.

"All I can remember is him taking that one painting and putting it behind the drivers' seat in the pickup truck we were using and he says, ‘I like this one. I'm going to take it for myself,'" said James Van Slyke. "I asked him what he was doing, and he told me I should mind my own business." (Van Slyke died of lung cancer in early November.)

The second helper backed up Van Slyke's account but declined to speak on the record.

Even if Mr. Hoffman has to return the money he made from auctioning off the painting or, worse, gets prosecuted under the federal law that prohibits interstate transportation of stolen goods worth more than $5,000, there's no doubt that the Portrait of Lock Rollinson of Chadlington, Oxfordshire provided him on a memorable journey. He says he had never before seen an auction or even visited Europe.

For Sotheby's, Mr. Hoffman is memorable for another reason: "This is the only time I can think of when someone has allegedly stolen something and soon thereafter has consigned it himself to public auction," said Jonathan Osloff, North American general counsel for Sotheby's.
stephenkurkjian@gmail.com

"John is not happy," Mr. Zuckerman told The Observer as he signed books for friends. "On a personal level, that hurts. But on a professional level, I guess that's a good thing."

Mr. Zuckerman, a senior writer at the Wall Street Journal, briefly addressed the crowd in the Regency Hotel's Mirror Room, following an introduction by the hotel's owner Tom Tisch.

"When I look around and see some of the top managers of money in this country, I realize I must have been too easy on you all these years," Mr. Zuckerman said, to great laughter from the crowd. "We're here to protect ourselves," someone called back.

Mr. Paulson certainly doesn't think that Mr. Zuckerman was too easy on him. This week he issued the following statement condemning the book, excerpts of which were reported by Business Week:

"It contains numerous inaccuracies and fails to capture the essence of the credit bubble. The writing style is indicative of a gossip tabloid rather than respected financial journalism. Unfortunately, the opportunity to create a meaningful documentation of an important time in financial history was lost."

The Greatest Trade Ever emerged out of Mr. Zuckerman's reporting on Mr. Paulson in 2007, when he received a tip that a hedge fund was turning unthinkable profits in the face of general market carnage. In 2007 alone, Paulson & Co. took in $15 billion, netting the Queens native nearly a $4 billion salary.

In the book's acknowledgments, Mr. Zuckerman thanks his subject for the "more than fifty hours" he spent being interviewed. Nevertheless, the completed product seems to have turned Mr. Paulson sour.

"John Paulson was very generous with his time and patient about explaining a very complicated trade," Mr. Zuckerman said later, pausing to say goodbye to his guests. "But he's a very private man. There were a lot of things he didn't want to speak about. I needed to have that stuff in the book anyway, so that's where the reporting comes in. I appreciate the time he spent and the patience he had with me. But I wanted to explore the man as well as the trade."

Mr. Paulson is in the slightly odd position of condemning a book that generally celebrates his financial genius.

"When I started thinking about this project, I knew that there would be a number of books about what went wrong, who's to blame, and about the losers of this crisis," Mr. Zuckerman said. "I got excited about writing about the same themes through the winners, which I invariably find more enjoyable to deal with and write about."

It will be interesting to see who emerges the winner of this current bout. Mr. Zuckerman defended the book in today's Post, saying it, "wasn't intended as a hagiography, but as a portrait in full. I stand by its accuracy, as does my publisher."

Mr. Zuckerman had passed by Border's earlier in the day and was pleased to see his book display sandwiched between those for mega-sellers Malcolm Gladwell and Joel Osteen. Surely a little controversy can't hurt sales.

The question came from Christopher Glazek, a fact-checker at The New Yorker, who wanted to know whether Mr. Douthat and Mr. Salam believed that former RNC chairman Ken Mehlman, who has apologized on behalf of his party for the Southern Strategy, should also apologize for the Republican party's gay politics.

At first Mr. Douthat seemed unable to get a sentence out without interrupting himself and starting over. Then he explained: "I am someone opposed to gay marriage who is deeply uncomfortable arguing the issue in public."

Mr. Douthat indicated that he opposes gay marriage because of his religious beliefs, but that he does not like debating the issue in those terms. At one point he said that, sometimes, he feels like he should either change his mind, or simply resolve never to address the question in public.

He added that the conservative opposition to gay marriage is "a losing argument," and asked rhetorically if committed homosexual relationships ought to be denied the legal recognition accorded without hesitation to the fleeting enthusiasms of Britney Spears and Newt Gingrich.

After the panel, Mr. Douthat told the Observer: "If I were putting money on the future of gay marriage, I would bet on it."

He added: "The secular arguments against gay marriage, when they aren't just based on bigotry or custom, tend to be abstract in ways that don't find purchase in American political discourse. I say, ‘Institutional support for reproduction,' you say, ‘I love my boyfriend and I want to marry him.' Who wins that debate? You win that debate."

Marco Roth, editor-at-large for n+1, interrupted. "We're taking you to Stonewall," he told Mr. Douthat.

Actually, the columnists and their hosts decamped to the considerably more middle-of-the road bar on Christopher Square, Kettle of Fish.

Held in the Grand Hyatt New York and the Time & Life building, the conference spanned two business days, from Wednesday, Oct. 14, to Thursday, Oct. 15. Wednesday focused on General Sessions and was geared toward industry leaders and magazine executives and editors. Sessions carried apocalyptic titles such as “The Future of Content” and “The End of the Media World as We Know It.”

In an effort to avoid the apocalypse, the Observer attended only the second day of panels, which were divided into three parts: Consumer Marketing, Ad Sales Marketing and Editorial. The Observer sat in on the second half of the Editorial panels.

The Observer joined the conference during Billboard editorial director Bill Werde’s lecture, titled “Interstitial: What Happened to the Record Album and Why It Matters to Magazines.” More Jerry Seinfeld than Rupert Murdoch, Mr. Werde charmed the audience of disgruntled magazine editors, opening with the disclaimer, “Yes, I am a journalist whose last name is Werde [pronounced wordy]; you’d be surprised how much publicists love that.” Illustrated by a powerpoint of line graphs that looked more like the outlines of multicolored mountain ranges than the demise of the music industry, Mr. Werde drew a correlation between the record industry and the magazine industry. “We can learn from this!” he announced both imperatively and with excitement. “I feel like the ghost of Christmas future.”

But the final panel of the conference, “The Decline and Rise of Magazine Journalism,” was what the Observer really came for. It was moderated by Slate Group chairman and editor in chief, Jacob Weisberg; members of the panel included Nick Denton of Gawker Media, “Media Guy” columnist Simon Dumenco and New Yorker articles editor Susan Morrison. Mr. Weisberg began the panel with open-ended questions such as “Do readers prize what we do as journalists?” and “Are magazines like newspapers in that a great business has turned into a very bad business?”

Mr. Dumenco volunteered hopefully, “The magazine industry is nowhere near as desperate as the newspaper industry.”

But Mr. Weisberg’s realism was unrelenting. “But what about the surveys that show that 20-somethings are not only going to the Web for newspapers but also for service-related magazines?" he asked. "The real problem with young people is that they aren’t just not reading it now, but they say they will never read a newspaper. Which means there is no hope for future generations.”

“O.K., but here’s the thing,” Ms. Morrison piped up, “the question isn’t do these readers exist, but, do they exist in a way that we can make any money off of them? Because the young people I encounter all read the newspaper; they just have never picked it up in print.”

Mr. Weisberg redirected to a more general query: “But what does the magazine mean right now? Is it a new form?”

Ms. Morrison sighed, “I think we are all kind of experimenting. You know, I’m old, but I don’t want to read a 12,000-word piece online, I want to read it on paper. But that is changing. Like David Grann’s recent article about Cameron Todd Willingham, the executed arsonist in Texas—it is a piece of typically long-form journalism, but we put it up online because we wanted it to create waves, we wanted it to be discussed and shared, and the easiest way to do that was to make it accessible online and email-able. And it was our most emailed story of all time!”

She continued, musing aloud: “One of the reasons John Updike wanted to be a novelist was just about the thingy-ness of the book. And I think that’s true of the magazine. It’s a thing we can go out and buy and hold. Will that be true for a future generation?”

Nick Denton jumped in: “It is also a question of when you tend to read something. You read news on the Web during the work day, you save magazines for the weekends. It’s a different reading mode. So, in that way magazines are better off than newspapers. When I think about launching a new Web site, I go to newsstands and look at how many magazines there are in each category. I don’t look at newspapers.”

This offered an opportunity for Mr. Weisberg to ask Mr. Denton about his Web sites, and whether Gawker Media is going to have to adjust “the digital sweatshop model” that his employees currently work under.

“We pay more than you’d expect!," said Mr. Denton. "And kids want to work for us, and we want them. The average age of our readers is 28, about thirty years younger than the average newspaper reader. It is important that the people writing and editing are of the same generation.”

Mr. Weisberg then asked Mr. Denton about how he monitors and fact-checks the content on his sites.

“We don’t,” Mr. Denton replied flatly. “We aim to get the truth over time. The verification model is post-publication rather than pre-publication. Our readers correct us and we apologize and we change it. We don’t have time to check it all before.”

Towards the end of the panel, Mr. Weisberg returned to Ms. Morrison: “How does The New Yorker stay on top of fact checking and accuracy as they try to enter into the up-to-the-minute online sphere?” he asked

“We try to edit every single thing that goes on the Web site,” said Ms. Morrison.

Mr. Denton was shocked. “Even the Twitter posts!?”

“We have Twitter posts?,” said Ms. Morrison. “I didn’t even know we were doing Twitter posts. Who tweets?”

Weisberg proffered one final comment, more musing than a question demanding an answer. “How do the mobile devices we all carry around with us affect this discussion?”

He touched his pocket as if to check that his own mobile device was still there.

On Saturday night, at the Brooklyn Book Festival's Gala Mingle, literary stars from Francine Prose to Colson Whitehead sipped white wine and chatted politely with one another about each other's work, under the harsh glare of flourescent lights.

Indeed, where past years’ galas have been held in elegant digs at the historic Dime Savings Bank and the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, Saturday’s festivities took place in a large hall and an adjacent cafeteria downstairs at St. Francis College, a block away from Borough Hall. The venue’s very thorough lighting made certain that most things were illuminated.

The room’s unforgiving visibility did not escape the notice of literary revelers. “This is terrible,” said a young editor. “I think everyone is just gritting their teeth.”

The impression of a high-school dance attended solely by shy, bookish types was only reinforced when JT Leroy hoax perpetrator Laura Albert began dancing slitheringly with her escort, Gary Lippman, to the jazz band. No one else joined in.

Still, most luminaries were too polite to respond to criticism of the venue.

Feeling a bit like you’re under the lights? “Well, yeah,” said Aleksandar Hemon, on hand to receive St. Francis College’s $50,000 literary prize (but not to read at the festival—the Sarajevo-born Chicagoan stopped off in Brooklyn on his way home from Berlin).

“I’m sure it was always way better than it is right now,” Ben Marcus said sarcastically.

Partygoers were more forthcoming on their plans to attend the festival the next day. “My two year old has a hot date with Mo Willems at 10:30 in the morning, that’s our priority,” said Jonathan Lethem.

Ms. Albert, wearing a black flapper dress and elaborate feathered hat (“I made it in shop,” Albert explained), was looking forward to one event in particular: “My own.” But she conceded that with so many world-class authors on hand, it would be hard to choose a second-best. “It’s like being a kid in a candy store. The only thing that would make me more wet is, like, if the Willy Wonka movie came to life.”

The Late Show with David Letterman (CBS, 11:35pm): Michael Douglas, Leighton Meester, Kid Cudi

The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien (NBC, 11:35pm): Antonio Banderas, Bill Hader, Chris Cornell

Jimmy Kimmel Live (ABC, 12:05am): Rumer Willis, The Used

Late Night with Jimmy Fallon (NBC, 12:35am): Russell Brand, Kaitlin Olson, George Jones

The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (CBS, 12:35am): Drew Carey, Mindy Kaling

Last Call with Carson Daly (NBC, 1:35am): John Scurti, Zee Avi

Chelsea Lately (E!, 11:00pm): Sam Trammell, Brad Wollack, Scott Henry, Loni Love

If you were one of the hundreds of people stuck on the corner of 59^th Street and 5^th Avenue trying to get into Bergdorf Goodman last night, don’t worry: the people inside the store didn’t see much more than you did.

The Late Show with David Letterman (CBS, 11:35pm): Matt Damon, Jack Hanna

The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien (NBC, 11:35pm): Dennis Quaid, Paolo Nutini

Jimmy Kimmel Live (ABC, 12:05am): Nick Cannon, Rod Blagojevich, White Lies

Late Night with Jimmy Fallon (NBC, 12:35am): Tyler Perry, Amber Tamblyn, Mario Batali

The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (CBS, 12:35am): Kate Beckinsale, Andre Leon Talley

Last Call with Carson Daly (NBC, 1:35am): Jeremy Renner, Brandon Jennings, The Ting Tings

Chelsea Lately (E!, 11:00pm): Antonio Sabato Jr., Heather McDonald, Jason Kennedy, Jo Koy

The Late Show with David Letterman (CBS, 11:30pm): Neil Patrick Harris, Steve Mazan, Edward Sharpe &the Magnetic Zeros.

The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien (NBC, 11:35pm): Jennifer Connelly.

Jimmy Kimmel Live (ABC, 12:05am): Gerard Butler, Nate Berkus, Maxwell

Late Night with Jimmy Fallon (NBC, 12:35am): Bob Costas, Jamie-Lynn Sigler, Pet Shop Boys

The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (CBS, 12:35am): Radha Mitchell, DJ Qualls.

Last Call with Carson Daly (NBC, 1:35am): Harland Williams, Aaron Fotheringham, Ben Harper & Relentless7.

Chelsea Lately (E!, 11:00pm): Stephan Jenkins, Bryan Callen, Natasha Leggero, Perez Hilton

The Late Show with David Letterman (CBS, 11:30pm): Billy Crystal, John Fogarty.

The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien (NBC, 11:35pm): Sandra Bullock, Gina Yashere.

Jimmy Kimmel Live (ABC, 12:05am): Kathie Lee Gifford, Milo Ventimiglia, R. Kelly.

Late Night with Jimmy Fallon (NBC, 12:35am): Jason Bateman, Ashlee Simpson, Shadows Fall.

The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (CBS, 12:35am): Carrie Fisher, Ron Livingston.

Last Call with Carson Daly (NBC, 1:35am): No New Show.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (Comedy Central, 11:00pm): No New Show.

The Colbert Report (Comedy Central, 11:30pm): No New Show.

Chelsea Lately (E!, 11:00pm): Eli Roth, Randy Sklar, Jason Sklar, Gary Valentine.