Witold Rybczynski, A Clearing in the Distance ****

A Clearing in the Distance is a biography of Frederick Law Olmsted, best remembered today as the designer of Central Park and Boston's Emerald Necklace but also known in his day as the author of a series of books about the antebellum South. The most notable thing is how varied his interests were and how long he lived before discovering his life's work. He doesn't start working in earnest as a landscape architect until he was 43, until page 269 of a 400-page book.

I feel myself becoming impatient with Olmsted. Why can't he just get on with it? We expect the lives of people -- especially people who achieve great things -- to follow a grand design... Following Olmsted's life is more like putting together a picture puzzle. All sorts of odd shapes are lying on the table... It's not yet clear how these fragments come together. Some pieces don't seem to fit anywhere.

As a young man, he took up scientific farming, journalism, health administration, mine management,  and social advocacy. He moved from area to area haphazardly; even his introduction to Central Park was the result of a chance meeting. One fortunate consequence of his wanderings is that it allows his biographer to comment on many different aspects of life in mid-19th century America as he puts the puzzle together. 

Rybczynski manages to suggest how many of the pieces fit together without seeming to promote an agenda. In particular, he shows how Olmsted's writing about the South relates to his landscape work as part of a larger vision of civilization. He is solicitous toward Olmsted, but the prickly parts of Olmsted's personality show through especially in his later years. I appreciated that he occasionally jumped forward to the present day to describe how some of Olmsted's works today compare to their original conception. 

I first read this book many years ago. I was thinking that I bought it from the gift shop at Olmsted's home and office in Brookline MA, but that's a confabulation. We visited Fairsted in 1992 while the book was copyrighted is 1999. I still think I bought it at one of Olmsted's places, but who knows.