505 Greenwich Street: Not a bad place to retreat to after a humiliating Oprah interview.

All the shame that James Frey endured when his non-fiction memoir on addiction was revealed to be largely manufactured may have hurt his byline, but his bottom line is doing just fine: he and wife Maya have unloaded their third-floor combination condo at 505 Greenwich Street for $3.9 million according to city records (a trustworthy source).

The couple picked up the two units in 2005 and 2008 for a combined total of a bit more than $3.5 million, combining them into one enormous 2,800-square foot four-bedroom.

The condo contains an obscenely large 40-foot by 23-foot living room, more than big enough to gather your closest friends and family and break the news to them that your memoir was mostly fabricated. But then, they probably already knew that.

We're not sure where Mr. and Mrs. Frey are headed—they haven't picked up any new homes in New York City lately, at least under their own names, and we weren't able to reach Mr. Frey for comment. Not that we could believe what he would have told us anyway.

But given Mr. Frey's recent rebound (he's written a couple of novels—marketed as novels—since the Million Little Pieces fiasco), we're guessing it's somewhere nice. Maybe Los Angeles? Back in 2010 Mr. Frey told the New York Post that he was working on an hour-long drama with Mark Wahlberg for HBO about the pornography industry.

"We're going to tell the type of stories no one else has told before, and go places no one has gone before," he said. "Very private places, we imagine." (Perhaps the master bedroom at 505 Greenwich, overlooking the building's zen garden?) Or maybe he'll stay a few nights at Chateau Marmont, but tell everyone he's actually moving in for the next three months?

The buyers, Kenneth Rapp and wife Michelle, should be familiar to those who follow New York real estate: Mr. Rapp is a vice chairman at commercial real estate brokerage CBRE, where he's been since 1988. He was unavailable for comment. But we wish him luck with his new home—may he only be brought to Oprah's couch for good things, as the ancient Chinese proverb goes.

Alone, a beautiful woman is exposed to a new form of entertainment. Enticed and left wanting she yearns to share her experience and soon finds another's world to penetrate in the white-noir short directed by Phillip Van, starring Petra Nemcova and James Frey. Petra Nemcova wears Marchesa, Marchesa for Louboutin and Kiki de Montparnasse.

Booktrack is the new service that provides synth swells to dramatize the reading experience with a soundtrack. Because reading is so boooring!! And yes, this is a lot like the old Maxell ads.

Frey.

Christine Vachon’s Killer Films will produce a film adaptation of James Frey’s The Final Testament of the Holy Bible. In the book, which was released in April, Jesus Christ returns in the form of a bisexual recovering alcoholic named Ben who lives in the Bronx.

In an interview with The Observer, Mr. Frey said that he gave Ms. Vachon a copy of the book six months before it was released, but that they had their first meeting on the project two weeks ago. He will adapt the screenplay himself but declined to suggest who he hopes will direct or star in the movie. When asked to give us an idea of what movies he had in mind, however, he listed a round-up notable for what he calls their “heavy, heavy emotional impact” but which some might refer to as a certain gross-out quality: Lars Von Triers’s Breaking the Waves, Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan, Larry Clark’s Kids (also produced by Ms. Vachon). He also mentioned Todd Haynes’s Velvet Goldmine (Haynes is a longtime Killer Films collaborator) and Derek Cienfrance’s Blue Valentine.

“I like a lot of emotionally impactful smaller films,” said Mr. Frey.

“But bigger in their intent and ambition,” Ms. Vachon hastened to add.

The Final Testament of the Holy Bible attracted as much attention for eschewing a traditional publisher in the United States as it did for its plot, which The Guardian called a “crock of mendacity” that “makes Jesus Christ Superstar sound like Handel's Messiah.” The book was published through a collaboration with Gagosian Gallery and only 10,000 copies were printed, with covers designed by the artist Gregory Crewdson. Each cost $50, with the exception of 1,000 copies of a special edition bound in black leatherette and signed that went for $150. The book was also available as a $6.99 electronic book.

“It’s not about making 100 million dollars, it’s about making the best thing,” said Mr. Frey.

What was the occasion for this unlikely mix of literature, reality TV and fine art? "Divine Comedy," an elaborate themed display of art by the former director of the Guggenheim Museum, now Sotheby's executive, Lisa Dennison. The exhibition, on view through Oct. 19, invites the visitor to Sotheby's to tour hell, heaven and purgatory in the form of artworks depicting each, several of the works spectacular or particularly rare. But despite a gimmicky conceit and lighthearted demeanor--"have fun," urged the wall text, right by a huge crucifix depicting Jesus Christ as a wart-covered frog--the show is very much about money. It represents a new business model for the auctioneer.

Many of the works on view are actually on loan from art galleries--Sperone Westwater and Paul Kasmin among them--seeking to use Sotheby's client list and contacts to market art privately. While it was originally announced that about half of the "Divine Comedy" art is for sale, virtually everything is, Sotheby's later confirmed. Commissions and split of the profits is being decided on a deal-by-deal basis.

London dealer Johnny Van Haeften has lent Franz Francken's 17th-century masterpiece Mankind's Eternal Dilemma--The Choice Between Vice and Virtue, which sold at a European auction for about $7 million; he hopes to flip it for $10 million here.

The show appears designed to generate controversy and attention--a kneeling Hitler is thrown in for good measure, along with that crucified frog, which is a work by Martin Kippenberger that the Pope actually declared blasphemous in 2008. The auctioneer's celebrity client list was used for the opening party. (The resulting "gets" were Julianne Moore, Emily Mortimer and Alan Cumming.)

Ms. Dennison granted the financial motives for the show--"We are an auction house," but said the show had provided viewers the opportunity to see "remarkable works" that otherwise would never have been on public view. As for courting controversy, Ms. Dennison said that's not the case, but "we couldn't ignore art that comments outside established traditions."

Drafted into all this was James Frey, who is co-owner of a Lower East Side art gallery--Half Gallery--and has written several art-catalog essays. He was on hand to sign a limited-edition exhibition catalog that featured his "Il Divino Bambino," a reinterpretation of Dante's story. He declined to discuss his compensation, and said he was very surprised at how many people wanted a signed catalog--"I thought I'd do two and be done with it." Interestingly, the famous dissembler said that his two favorite works in the show were the Francken and the only "fake" chosen for the whole exhibition, a particularly harsh version of the afterlife painted not by a famous artist but by his "follower," i.e., copycat. "I love the fake Bosch," he said.

Update 10/8, 10:30 a.m.

The Observer's own Amir Shoucri was treated to a preview of the collection, and produced the stellar video below. Check it out!

Sotheby's Takes You to Hell from The New York Observer on Vimeo.

Mr. Scott will host a Times Talks panel with Mr. Crewdson in October and, at the artist's invitation, penned an essay to preface the eponymous book featuring the series.

"In my ordinary line of work I tend to keep a distance from the artists that I write about and not really talk to them and engage them, just because it's not really how it's done," he told The Observer, eyeing the room.  "It was really a treat for me to just kind of to be writing as a critic in a slightly different, more sympathetic way."

Mr. Crewdson was the man of the hour, with Gagosian photographers circling him to document his interactions, occasionally chatting with the throng ("Your hair is beautiful." "Oh, do you want me to turn around so you can take a picture of it?")

The photos on the wall were shot at the empty, decaying sets of Rome's Cinecittà movie studios — a departure from Mr. Crewdson's usually populated pictures, which are staged to look like stills from movies that never existed. "I just wanted to do something that felt very restrained and empty," he told The Observer. "Something that felt particular to the moment we're in, and I feel like these pictures reflect a certain kind of fragility and sadness, and beauty."

"I think this might be my favorite work of his," said Noah Baumbach, who made quite the entrance, accompanied by his wife, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Wes Anderson. "In some ways the artificiality almost makes them more real which is I guess what movies are like, right?"

The blurring of the lines can be, to use Mr. Scott's word, uncanny. "This is why, if you read the essay, it's got Freud all over it," he said. "I jumped into psychoanalysis, which is not my usual idiom, to kind of figure out what these pictures were doing."

As personalities poured in and out, the groups mingled. Mr. Scott could be seen chatting enthusiastically with Mr. Baumbach at one point ("We were talking about kids," the director later told The Observer). Among the attendees was the writer James Frey, and The Observer asked him what he's been up to.

"Working away, man," he said, chewing a green piece of gum. "Got a book coming out in April. It's about the messiah."

Is it a novel?  

"Maybe, maybe not. Doesn't really matter," he chewed. "I don't care what people call it, it's just a book. Doesn't matter."

Sanctuary runs at the Gagosian Gallery through October 30.

dduray@observer.com

“I’m so damn, D-A-M-N, nervous,” Ms. Kalman told the judge, Jesse Sheidlower, the soft-spoken editor at large for the Oxford English Dictionary.

“If you look at the National Spelling Bee, all of the words are something nobody cares about” Mr. Sheidlower said. “We’re concerned with words everyone knows, but no one can spell.”

The contestants wore sparkly bee antennae and big name tags that hung around their necks. Literary agent Ira Silverberg was the master of ceremonies.

Mr. Burnham—the returning champion—was up first, nailing “leopardess.”

Kenneth Davis—who started the popular “Don’t Know Much About…” series—was knocked out first, stumbling on “bumptiously.”

“Don’t know much about spelling,” Mr. Silverberg said.

“Do these antennae make my butt look big?” asked New Yorker TV critic Nancy Franklin.

Mr. Frey—who hasn’t made it to the second round for the past two years he’s played—continued his losing streak with “blazonry.”

Then, scandal: Tayari Jones, author of The Untelling, revealed she was using her BlackBerry.

“You were Twittering!” Mr. Silverberg exclaimed, demanding she give up the phone.

“Tweeting,” Ms. Jones said, and handed it over.

“Spell ‘whirlybird!’” Mr. Silverberg yelled. She complied, correctly.

Mr. Musto was not so lucky, putting an “e” in place of the “i” in “dirndl.”

The finalists were authors Ben Greenman, Francine Prose, Ms. Singer and Observer alum Alex Kuczynski. The words came thick and fast: lackadaisical, domiciliary, gazpacho, vilification, brigantine.

“I’d really like to win this award for my newborn baby!” Ms. Kuczynski said frantically. “Oh God! Give it to me!”

But it was Mr. Greenman who prevailed, with an industry term: “colophon.”

There was 4-year-old Maren Frey, the platinum blond, adorable little daughter of Bright Shiny Morning author James Frey and wife, Maya. Tiny Maren was outfitted in a white dress, silver sandals, and a string of pearls for her Fashion Week debut. Gigi Clementine, a 3-year-old dressed in a tiny floral number, was the daughter of Ms. Rowley and husband, author Bill Powers (wearing silver sneakers), who was seated next to the Freys. The third girl, a brunette in a blue dress, looked to be around the same age and spent much of her time on the lap of actress Tatum O'Neal, who as far as we know has not given birth in the last five years. (Perhaps a niece?)

Mr. Frey's presence at the show was not surprising. When Daily Transom found the author in the front row of Ms. Rowley's show in September 2006, he insisted he was dragged to the show by his wife, who is apparently very into fashion. (When we caught up with the spouses in 2006, Mrs. Frey was in Hermes and Prada, and Mr. Frey was wearing Hanes, Adidas, and J. Crew.) To yesterday's show, Mr. Frey wore an untucked white polo shirt, khakis, and sneakers.

Ms. O'Neal was seated in the front row next to Julia Stiles and several seats away from author Candace Bushnell and actor Alan Cumming, who was (embarrassingly!) wearing the same plaid blazer as Mr. Powers. Across the runway were the Freys seated next to Mr. Powers and his little girl in the front row.

As the bleacher stands at Ms. Rowley's show began to fill up with editors and guests at 3 p.m. (the scheduled time for the show), the girls ran between the adults seated across the runway from each other, bumping into the photographers who were snapping photos of the front row guests. By the time the show began at 3:40, the girls seemed to have worn themselves out and all three settled into the laps of Mr. Frey and Mr. Powers. And once the models began to come down the runway, the girls watched with interest and when inspired, raised their heads to deliver their reviews to the adults.

Hello, Night of the Gun! Frey again:

At the end of the article there's kind of a huge revelation, though knowing Frey's prankish tendencies, it very well might be a joke. According to the Times, at least, Frey's next book will be called The Final Testament of the Bible, and it will "concern his ideas of who and what the Messiah is—he doesn't claim he's it—as if Christ were walking the streets of New York. It will be written in chapter and verse form." Frey explains: "I don’t think my idea of what the Messiah would be is in line with what most religious American people's would be. I don't think he would be a judgmental person condemning individuals for actions that they may be genetically predisposed to taking. It will be the third book of the Bible. If I do that effectively, it’s going to ruffle some feathers."

Thanks to the Big Jim Industries Web log for the link.

We hear HarperCollins is pleased.

At an appearance to promote his new book, Bright Shiny Morning, in San Francisco on Friday, Mr. Frey was met by the forces of Down with Frey, an organization whose aims are pretty self-explanatory. But, here's the thing: Mr. Frey seemed to like them. On his Amazon promotional blog, Omnivoracious, Mr. Frey wrote that he'd "met a guy who had started a protest group called Down With Frey. I chatted with him for a couple minutes, and he was a nice, smart guy."

That guy is Jan Frel, an editor at AlterNet, who started Down With Frey with his wife, Hadley Suter. According to The SF Weeky's Snitch blogger, Andy Wright, they're kind of the only members.

Wright chronicles the brief encounter between Frel, Suter, and Frey and Frey's friend, "an extremely angry-looking guy with black hair and tattoos," including the moment when Mr. Frey's pal menaced Mr. Frel like a high school bully:

Contacted by Media Mob, Mr. Frel said the encounter was accurately described by Wright. He clarified his distaste for Mr. Frey, writing, "The problem is as much with his audience and the literary world in the U.S.—the NYT, and Vanity Fair's favorable treatment of him demonstrates the zombie-like lack of accountability for failure, disgrace, and decadence that's emerging as status quo in all aspects of society. It's tied to the same decadent trend that leaves Bush still standing after robbing the country blind and committing real war crimes."

On Friday, SF Weekly's Ms. Wright asked Mr. Frey what he thought of his two-person backlash: The author responded, "I think it's awesome!"

What a guy! We bet he was that cool when Porterhouse hit him in the head with a tray in prison too. Oh, right... That never happened.