2019-10-01_Southern_Lady

OCTOBER 2019 64

F

or a boarder at Thomas Wolfe’s sprawling

childhood home in the early 1900s, it could

be a nightmare: a curious young boy, left to

roam freely in the oddly configured

structure, spies on life around him and later

turns his observations into a renowned novel, Look

Homeward, Angel.

The book, published in 1929, was a coming-of-age,

tell-all tale set in the western North Carolina town of

Altamont, a fictitious name given Asheville, where the

novelist grew up in the boardinghouse run by his

enterprising mother, Julia Wolfe. The domicile, known as

Old Kentucky Home and called “Dixieland” in the book,

caused a rift in the large Wolfe family. Today, it stands

amid modern city buildings as a monument that brings to

life the writer’s somewhat skewed childhood.

“As soon as the book was published, people started

showing up to see [the house]. It is a character in his

writings,” says Tom Muir, historic site manager at the

Thomas Wolfe Memorial in the heart of the bustling

mountain burg. “Look Homeward, Angel launched him onto

the American literary scene and immortalized this house.”

Almost immediately after Look Homeward, Angel’s

release, lists appeared identifying the real people in

Asheville upon whom the 200-plus characters were based.

Not all of them, including his own mother, appreciated

Thomas’s vivid and less-than-complimentary descriptions.

Some even spewed death threats. The author, avoiding the

backlash of family and hometown friends, didn’t return to

Asheville for nearly eight years, instead teaching and

writing in New York and traveling throughout the U.S. and

Europe during his self-imposed exile.

Yet the Old Kentucky Home remained a part of the family’s

fabric during his entire lifetime: Thomas’s brother Ben and

his father, W.O. Wolfe, died there; his two sisters married

there; and Thomas’s own wake was held in the parlor.

Boardinghouses were popular lodgings in the early

20th century, particularly for single women and widows on

a fixed income, families moving to the city from rural

areas, and travelers. Tom says the menagerie of tenants

gave Thomas ample fodder for his novels, plays, and