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A fire, later ruled arson, burned one-third of the Thomas Wolfe house in downtown Asheville on the the night of July 24, 1998. In Wolfe’s day, the 29-room Queen Ann built in 1883 was a boardinghouse – “Old Kentucky Home” -- run by his mother. It has since been restored to its 1916 appearance, the last year Wolfe lived there.

The Thomas Wolfe Memorial http://www.wolfememorial.com/news_upfrom.html reopened to visitors in 2004.

Somebody threw an object through the dining room window to start the fire. The Associated Press also reported in 1998 that a $20,000 reward was offered for information leading to an arrest. No one has ever been charged, as far as I can find in a Web surf.

This whodunit apparently has caused rumor and speculation in that hipsterville west of Carrboro. As evidence, here’s “Fire Gazer: Arson at the Wolfe House” (Reminiscing Books: Asheville, 100 pages, $11.95 paper. The distributor is John F. Blair, Publisher; Winston-Salem) by Kevin Burton McGuire. He lives in Asheville.

What to call this? A novel? A short story? A novella? A press release calls it a fictional account. That I’ll concede, with one caveat: It’s not a good one. It reads like an early draft.

The account centers on a young Asheville newspaper reporter assigned to do a story about ghosts. He encounters a charismatic street person, DC, with a gift for gabbing about spirits and a new world order. He has a following, Rank Dave, two teen-age runaways and unnamed others or maybe they have names, I don’t remember. You wouldn’t either. As the reporter, let’s call him Ben -- the author does, hangs out here and there with DC, the reader encounters DC’s fascination with fire (aha!), paganlike rites, and the ghost of Zelda Fitzgerald, loony wife of F. Scott. (She burned to death in an Asheville mental hospital in the, oh, ‘30s or ‘40s?)

So where’s the drama here, the conflict to drive a story? Consulting the press release again, I read: “Through Ben’s private journal entries, learn of his struggle to overcome DC’s destructive cynicism and his pursuit of an artistic vision. Will Ben follow his own artistic calling, or will he adopt DC’s anti-social lifestyle?”

Oh.

Somebody misspelled O. Henry throughout this fictional account. He takes a period, not an apostrophe.