The Trip to Echo Spring: On Writers and Drinking

by Olivia Laing

WHY IS IT THAT SOME OF THE GREATEST WORKS OF LITERATURE HAVE BEEN PRODUCED BY WRITERS IN THE GRIP OF ALCOHOLISM, AN ADDICTION THAT COST THEM PERSONAL HAPPINESS AND CAUSED HARM TO THOSE WHO LOVED THEM?
In "The Trip to Echo Spring," Olivia Laing examines the link between creativity and alcohol through the work and lives of six extraordinary men: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver.
All six of these writers were alcoholics, and the subject of drinking surfaces in some of their finest work, from "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" to "A Moveable Feast." Often, they did their drinking together: Hemingway and Fitzgerald ricocheting through the cafes of Paris in the 1920s; Carver and Cheever speeding to the liquor store in Iowa in the icy winter of 1973.
Olivia Laing grew up in an alcoholic family herself. One spring, wanting to make sense of this ferocious, entangling disease, she took a journey across America that plunged her into the heart of these overlapping lives. As she travels from Cheever's New York to Williams's New Orleans, and from Hemingway's Key West to Carver's Port Angeles, she pieces together a topographical map of alcoholism, from the horrors of addiction to the miraculous possibilities of recovery.
Beautiful, captivating, and original, "The Trip to Echo Spring" strips away the myth of the alcoholic writer to reveal the terrible price creativity can exert.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, Memoir, Writing, Essays, History, Travel

384 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2013

About the author

Olivia Laing is a writer and critic. She’s the author of To the River, The Trip to Echo Spring and The Lonely City, which has been translated into 17 languages and sold over 100,000 copies worldwide. Her collected essays, Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency, were published in 2020.

Her first novel, Crudo, is a real-time account of the turbulent summer of 2017. It was a Sunday Times top ten bestseller and a New York Times notable book of 2018 and was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize and the Gordon Burn Prize. In 2019 it won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

Laing’s writing about art & culture appears in the Guardian, Observer, Financial Times and frieze, among many other publications. She’s a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and in 2018 was awarded the Windham-Campbell Prize for non-fiction.

Her new book, Everybody: A Book About Freedom is a dazzling investigation into the body and its discontents, using the life of the renegade psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich to chart a daring course through the long struggle for bodily freedom.

Reviews

[Diane · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book combines two of my favorite topics -- alcoholism and writers. And yet, I was disappointed.

Olivia Laing picked six writers who struggled with alcohol addiction: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Cheever, John Berryman, and Raymond Carver. Laing traveled around the United States to visit their old haunts, analyzed their writings about drinking, and mixed it all up with some scientific research into alcoholism.

"I wanted to know what made a person drink and what it did to them. More specifically I wanted to know why writers drink, and what effect this stew of spirits has had upon the body of literature itself ... There have been many books and articles that revel in describing exactly how grotesque and shameful the behaviour of alcoholic writers can be. That wasn't my intention. What I wanted was to discover how each of these men ... experienced and thought about their addiction."

What I found most interesting were the drinking stories and quotes she included from the writers themselves or from those who knew them. However, there are only eight chapters in the book, and instead of focusing on one writer in a chapter, she jumped between the six men so often that I found it jarring. For example, just when I would be getting in the groove about Cheever, she'd suddenly switch to a Fitzgerald anecdote.

I think my favorite section discussed the friendship/rivalry between Fitzgerald and Hemingway, and how Hemingway would look down on Scott for not being able to hold his drink. Hem wrote: "Alcohol was a straight poison to Scott instead of a food." Of course, we know that alcohol is a poison, but Hem didn't see it that way.

There was also a strong section on Tennessee Williams and his time in New Orleans. Laing, who is British, said she "found it almost impossible to piece New Orleans together. It wasn't like any place I'd ever visited, though at times it reminded me in its rich confusion of Addis Ababa, especially at night."

Aside from the New Orleans section, the travelogue portions were the weakest part of the book. Laing took an Amtrak train for much of her journey across the States, and she included far too many pointless observations and random conversations with strangers that had no bearing on the narrative.

It seems like Laing was trying to mix three different types of writing: scientific research into alcoholism, a travelogue around the U.S., and a critical analysis of literature and letters, but the final concoction was flat.

Note: The title refers to a line in Tennessee Williams' play "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," when Brick, the alcoholic husband, says he's "takin' a little short trip to Echo Spring," which was a nickname for a liquor cabinet that housed a brand of bourbon.

[Jennifer nyc · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

I’m always on the lookout for a good audiobook, for when my eyes are tired, or when doing chores. This is free with audible membership, and the narrator is clear and crisp, like the text she reads. Laing is an excellent writer - I enjoyed her language, her psychological observations and thorough research, her touch of the personal. I think this would make a great docuseries, with each episode focused on a specific writer explored in the book: John Cheever, Raymond Carver, Tennessee Williams, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and John Berryman. In that format, the wide range of focus - the personal life of each writer, his dance with alcohol, and his intersecting friendship with another on this list; the close look at the literary works of these writers through Laing’s analytical mind; some of the brain science behind alcoholism, along with some of its history; a touch of how alcoholism impacted Laing and her family; and the literal journey Laing took through some of the relevant United States, such as New Orleans and Key West. It’s got the right amount of depth and breadth for a docuseries to satisfy.

As a book, however, I was hoping for a deeper dive. I was especially disappointed by her self-exploration, which felt little more than a dip of her big toe, although some of those dips were deeply moving.

I also found that my level of engagement depended greatly on my knowledge of the writer explored. As someone who’s been riveted by case studies of complete strangers because of human recognition, I can only guess that the analysis here of literary works requires some foreknowledge for full appreciation. That said, I was fully absorbed in the biographies of Hemingway, Fitzgerald and especially Tennessee, who has been a favorite playwright of mine since college; I found the one about Carver interesting, as I’ve read a story or two; I grasped a bit at Cheever, enjoying some of his human exposure and connections with these other writers, but was also thrilled that my friend, Bonnie, just handed me a tome of his work; and Berryman eluded me. I also found that Laing’s travels were more engrossing in New Orleans, where I’ve been. I wasn’t absorbed in her other locations, but felt grounded, at least, in familiar New York. I don’t need to be familiar with a place to enjoy a book set there - in fact, I read to immerse myself in unfamiliar worlds - so I’m not sure why I felt that way here, but I did. I’m not going to recommend a trip to each place before reading this, but I do recommend exposure to each writer. I also wonder if reading the physical book would’ve been more fulfilling, as I did have moments I wanted to return to, lines I wanted to chew and digest.

[julieta · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have said this many times, but I love the way Olivia Laing thinks, how she connects themes in her head, and finds ways to make these connections great storytelling. The only part I did not love was when she spoke of John Berryman, I just thought it was the truly tragic part, maybe because I had not read that writer in particular. I was not after dark stories, even if this is a book about alcoholics, I was more curious to know where she would take it, since I have read other books by her and I like the way her mind works. Here I felt she was looking for something else, something on vulnerability, on being human, on trauma, and I like to think there is more to say than just a story about how sometimes you are won over by your weakness, or by your pain. Maybe we don´t tend to look at other peoples pain very much, and maybe there is no way out sometimes, but I do feel that art is an expression that we leave behind after we are gone, even when life has been too much. And this book maybe gives us a picture on how tough it can be, even for people who have marked the literary world in such a beautiful way.

[Washington Post · Rating 1 out of 5]

“The Trip to Echo Spring” uncovers very little new about authors we know too much about. Instead of Hemingway or Fitzgerald, she might have inspected the lives of Kingsley Amis or Dorothy Parker. This book is riddled with the first-person singular, more often than not in ways totally irrelevant to the business at hand. Thus: “Months ago, back in England, when I was just beginning to think down into the subject of alcohol, I became certain that whatever journey I was making would begin in a hotel room on East 54th Street, ten minutes’ walk from Broadway.” And: “I don’t believe in ghosts, but I am interested in absences, and the fact that the room had ceased to exist pleased me.” And: “The AA meeting was on the Upper West Side at 6 p.m. I slept a while at the hotel and then cut across Central Park, eating a hot dog on the way.”

Et cetera. That tells you nothing at all about writers and alcohol. So it cannot surprise you to learn later that, walking along the beach in Key West, Laing is pleased to be told by a passing stranger, and hastens to pass it along to us: “I hope your day is as beautiful as you are.” That is pretty much the poisonous icing on the inedible cake of this dreadful book, an exercise in narcissism and irrelevance from first page to last.

Jonathan Yardley reviewed the book for us: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinion...

[Sian Lile-Pastore · Rating 5 out of 5]

well, just thinking about alcoholism fills me with anxiety, but this is a wonderful book and just my kind of thing. while it is in the main about why writers drink, it is also a little bit of a travel book and a memoir and is just lovely and bookish and tender and slightly sad.

it focuses on the lives of berryman, fitzgerald, hemingway, tenessee williams, raymond carver and john cheever (and if you are concerned that Laing is ignoring women writers/drinkers, she addresses that quite early on in the book)and has some really fascinating insights - one of which that really stuck with me was the fact that lots of the alcoholic writers are also obsessed with water and it's cleansing properties... like cheevers 'the swimmer', the pools in fitzgerald, carver's fishing and lots more...

I could have done with more about Carver... or just more in general, am really interested in reading her previous book now too.

[Nada Elshabrawy · Rating 5 out of 5]

أوليفيا لاينج هي واحدة من قلائل ـ في رأيي المتواضع ـ بين الكتاب والكاتبات المعاصرين اللي ممكن يتقال عليها مفكرة حقيقية. تذكرني دائمًا بسونتاج مع وجود فروق كبيرة بينهم.
كتاباتها بتحمل عمق واختلاف، وموضوعاتها مثيرة جدًا وغير مطروحة معظم الوقت او على الأقل لا يتم التعاطي معها خارج الاوساط الاكاديمية.
المدينة الوحيدة كتابها الوحيد المترجم للعربية، ولكن باقي كتاباتها لا تقل عنه، بل تزيد، في الاهمية.
كالعادة، بعد كل كتاب لها، أعد قائمة قراءات حدثتني عنها أو ناقشتها في الكتاب. وهذا لو تعلمون عظيم.

[Vartika · Rating 3 out of 5]

I first read this book in 2020, just about a week before the pandemic changed the shape of the year and everything to follow. I have never been unduly interested in alcohol, merry enough with my two drinks, but neither was I untouched by the image of the intoxicated writer and the youthful assumption that glory in either domain – writing or intoxication – is inseparable from the other. I hadn’t yet read much from the six American male authors – F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tennessee Williams, Ernest Hemingway, John Berryman, John Cheever and Raymond Carver – whose intersecting, prodigious, and prodigiously drunk lives The Trip to Echo Spring delves into, and decided to give it a go purely out of a cursory fascination with the relationship between writers and drinking and, of course, my admiration for Olivia Laing’s works.

Laing, however, took to writing this book as a more meaningful engagement: having witnessed the destructiveness of an alcoholic parental figure (her mother’s then-partner, Diana) as a child, she became obsessed with writers and what they had to say about alcohol and its effects, since writers, “by their very nature, describe the affliction best.” This book-length deep-dive into the subject is the result of this obsession, and also the reason why The Trip to Echo Spring examines only white, male authors (while the topic of women who sought refuge in the bottle hit too close to home, she did eventually write a Guardian piece about “brilliant, restless,” and female drinkers such as Jean Rhys, Jean Stafford, Marguerite Duras, Patricia Highsmith, Elizabeth Bishop, Jane Bowles, Anne Sexton, Carson McCullers, Dorothy Parker and Shirley Jackson). As in her other books, Laing here approaches her area of interest through a pilgrimage of sorts: the ‘trip’ of the title is real, though ‘Echo Spring’, specifically a reference from Tennessee Williams’ 1955 play Cat On A Hot Tin Roof – is

Physically…nothing more than a nickname for a liquor cabinet, drawn from the brand of bourbon in contains. Symbolically, though, it refers to something quite different: perhaps to the attainment of silence, or to the obliteration of troubled thoughts that comes, temporarily at least, with a sufficiency of booze.

Tracking how the impulse for such a symbolic peace impacted the lives and careers of the six writers she is looking at, and considering, too, the echo of how these men shared a “deep, enriching love for water,” Laing takes a footloose journey across America, primarily through the Key West, to understand better their impulse to drink, and to write.

I decided to pick this book back up today after finishing Raymond Carver’s Cathedral, and was struck, once again, by her valuable insight. The Trip to Echo Spring goes far beyond literary criticism or biography as a devoted exploration of writers whose addiction to drink has been key in the way they have all been glamourised. Here, Laing humanises these men by looking at what it was that really drove them to the bottle: not so much the notion of a ‘creative high’ as a great deal of trauma and suffering – including difficult childhoods, alcoholic fathers, repressed homosexual feelings, the unending labours of survival – that needed to be numbed. Far from making these men suave, their addiction made them worse for wear, with public and private misdemeanours that, despite numerous attempts at drying-up, drove them – all but one – to tragic deaths. I was particularly taken with Carver’s story this time, for obvious reasons, but Cheever, Williams, and Fitzgerald’s lives also took a lot of my sympathies. Even Hemingway – a man whose life and work I have never been able to admire – I felt sorry for, and Berryman – though I am not familiar with his work at all – was perhaps the most ill-fated of them all.

This is, however, not merely a project to serve literary intrigue. Instead, it uses the example of each of the six writers considered within it to paint a more granular and empathetic image of addiction as a disease and the difficulties faced by alcoholics in their efforts – often faltering, usually failing – to beat it. Given that Laing’s motivations for undertaking this physical and scholarly journey included a sense of healing and release for her own self, The Trip to Echo Spring maps these authors’ literary output in light of lived experiences to show readers how deeply embedded their degeneration, vulnerability, and hope for improvement was in their work. Through this, and through the authors’ own accounts – real and fictionalised – of rehabilitation and AA, she sheds light on the trials of recovery and all the psychological labour it involves.

All in all, I found this worthwhile: emotional, emphatic, and yet managing not to be bleak despite the terrain it covers.

3.5 stars

[Roger · Rating 2 out of 5]

That there is something fascinating to many about the connexion between alcohol and writing is evidenced by the bibliography of the book under review, which contains a healthy selection of articles and books discussing the issue from all sorts of angles. One of the books in the bibliography, The Thirsty Muse : alcohol and the American writer, is a book I've read several times: I was hoping that The trip to Echo Spring would be another enjoyable essay into this murky subject, but alas I closed the book feeling disappointed.

Initially this book was full of promise - Laing writes near the beginning "There have been many books and articles that revel in describing exactly how grotesque and shameful the behaviour of alcoholic writers can be. That wasn't my intention. What I wanted was to discover how each of these men [Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Cheever, John Berryman and Raymond Carver] - and, along the way, some of the many others who'd suffered from the disease [alcoholism] - experienced and thought about their addiction." Laing was hoping to come closer to finding the reason why such talented individuals drank so dangerously. Along the way there would be short diversions into medicine and psychology to help Laing and the reader along the path to understanding.

Unfortunately for the book these are not the only diversions. This book is, disappointingly, what I call "new" non-fiction, by which I mean non-fiction where the author's activity takes up a healthy share of the pages. This is a most annoying circumstance of our current literary age: whether it is an indication of the rise of a "me" generation, or whether it is felt that by doing so personalises and makes a book easier to read I don't know, but, apart from a very few works of genius it is a mode that usually fails, as it does here. As the book moves on the authorial intrusion becomes more, well, intrusive. Apart from a few passages where Laing describes why she became interested in the subject (her experiences with alcoholic family members / partners) and some descriptive material about places she visits that are to do with the authors, all of the writing about herself (mostly to do with the train journey she takes across the USA to visit the authorial sites) is really superfluous to the subject of the book, and is at times frankly strange. Snippets of conversation, descriptions of views from train windows, discussions with fellow passengers which have nothing to do with writing or alcohol just struck me as out of place in this book. It's a very brave or foolish author who sets their descriptive writing alongside quotations from the likes of Fitzgerald and Hemingway as Laing does in this book. The comparison is not favourable.

However, it's not all bad news - Laing does find some interesting connexions between the writers discussed, and does delve into their literature, letters, memoirs &c to find where they've either tried or failed to come to grips with their problems. Inevitably she has to, from time-to-time, discuss their shameful behaviour, but on the whole she stays true to her desire not to make that the main focus. Her writing on the families of the writers studied is interesting and I think does shine some light into the problems they had. As a person who doesn't read many biographies of writers, I was unaware that both Hemingway's and Berryman's fathers committed suicide - which had lasting effects on each of them.

In the end there is no definitive answer as to why writers and drink sometimes form such a toxic combination, although if there's any connecting link between these six it might be that they drank to hide their insecurities, from others and from themselves.

I will, after reading this, go and read some Cheever, and re-visit Carver and Berryman, who I haven't looked at for a long time. Laing has given me a new way to look at them.

If Laing had not decided to make this book a vehicle for herself as much as her subject she might have produced a very good short book. As it is, she has produced an average three hundred page book. A shame.

Check out my other reviews at http://aviewoverthebell.blogspot.com.au/

[Puck · Rating 3 out of 5]

“First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you."
- F. Scott Fitzgerald

In The Trip to Echo Spring, Olivia Laing set out to debunk the myth of “alcohol + creativity = success”. By researching the addictions of six famous authors, the author shows not only how alcohol left a mark on their work, but also on their health.

Laing’s engaging prose easily takes us along her journey through America while she studies the works of Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, John Berryman, Tennessee Williams, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver.
Despite their differences, at their core all these men struggled with similar problems: an alcoholic father, a restricting mother, mental health issues, repressed homosexual feelings…Neither did it help that in the 20th century alcohol addiction wasn’t taken seriously. Look at the Great Gatsby: no one wants the party to stop.

“Modern life is often a mechanical oppression and liquor is the only mechanical relief.”
- Ernest Hemingway

I’m not familiar with any of the studied authors – I’ve heard of their work, but that’s it – so I enjoyed learning about their lives and how the men inspired each other. However, instead of focusing on one author per chapter, Laing mixes up their stories, often confusing me about whom I was following.
I also would’ve preferred if Laing had cut down on her travel-descriptions. They added little to the narrative and to the underlying message of this book. Alcohol doesn’t help you a better author (shocker): it helps you to die quicker.

So although this book is a moodkiller – reading how lonely, nervous men ruin their health isn't fun - this 'mood-killing' is also this book’s strength. Alcohol is a toxic, a dangerous addiction, and to show its destructive effects still is important today.
Well done Laing, but less traveloque stories next time. 3 stars

[Joanne · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was disappointing. I heard the author being interviewed on the radio, and she intrigued me. However, I found the book to be just plain tedious. I don't need to read excerpts from the DSM or have explained to me how alcohol works. I wanted to read more about these gifted men and less about the author wandering around Key West or New Orleans. The book bored me, and I found myself skimming great swatches of chapters. Can't recommend this book if you are looking for details of the writers.

[Kusaimamekirai · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a profoundly moving book about six writers: Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, Raymond Carver, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and John Cheever. All six men struggled with alcohol abuse for most of their lives, with it ultimately in one form or another, killing each of them.
Part travelogue (the author who is English travels across America in search of the spaces these writers inhabited) and part biography,this book provides brief sketches of their lives, their disintegration, and how alcohol became an inescapable part of their lives and art.
While all the stories share common themes such as abusive households, absent fathers who often met violent ends, or unstable relationships with women, what struck me the most was the despair they all shared.
There is for example a clip on YouTube of Tennessee Williams fresh out of rehab appearing on the David Frost show. He claims to be sober and yet is clearly inebriated. He smiles the nervous smile of a man who clearly knows that what he is saying is a lie and yet the audience laughs nervously with him. It is incredibly sad to watch and it provides a window into the life of a man who you know is dying in front of you and yet, nobody can or is willing to, stop him.
Yet it would be a mistake to simply write these men off as self indulgent drunks who lacked self control.
Take again the case of Williams when after being savagely beaten by some random youths on his way home was asked about the incident:

“They knew who he was, but he didn’t let it bother him. ‘Why not?’ an interviewer asked a few months later, and he replied, stalwart as ever: ‘Because, baby, I don’t allow it to.’ "

I don’t allow it to.
I’m not sure why this response stuck with me like it did but it’s quite amazing. In a world of drugs, alcohol, and personal chaos, Williams still managed to maintain his dignity and decency where he could. It seemed to me to be the heart of this book. That a man may be falling apart, he may have little left in his life that he can control, but he can always control how he responds to the blows the world may throw at him. The men chronicled here did not for the most part deal with those blows well. However, all of them maintained a kind of courage to continue chronicling their struggle through their art. They left behind a valuable lesson for anyone struggling with depression and all in their own way lived incredible lives. The sadness lies in the fact that their demons cut short what could have been so much more. A truly amazing but very sad read.

[George Ilsley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Been handling this book for a while and finally read it. It is strangely powerful at times, an exploration of the drinking habits of certain famous writers (famous for their work and famous for their drinking).

The connection between alcohol and creativity is controversial, and I was unable to figure out how Laing managed to achieve the synergy from her topic and her approach to the topic through this book. It is astonishing how much people used to drink; on the other hand some of these heavy drinkers, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, were dead at age 44.

In a recent news article on drinking culture, it was suggested that if alcohol were invented today it would never be approved for human consumption because of its toxic nature and side-effects (it is a carcinogen, a fact rarely mentioned in polite society). Alcohol is still the drug of choice for many people, and the unquestioned acceptance of this environment while seemingly being oblivious to it, being blind to the nature of a pervasive addiction throughout society, is not really addressed in this book. Of course, that aspect was not Laing's treatise: she was concerned with the intersection of writing and drinking and used six well-known writers as the means to explore the topic. And explore it she does.

Does alcohol foster creativity or destroy it? If you end up dead at 44 you better work fast!

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

A confession: I wasn't interested in the work of all but one of the writers profiled (Tennessee Williams). However, I got the book from the library primarily for the travel narrative aspect, where I felt Laing excelled. The writers' biographies interested me (for the most part), as did the author's own story, which I didn't find intrusive at all. I did tend to zone out when she examined their actual work in any detail, but as I said, I knew that might happen at the outset.

This book is recommended for those who are fans of some of the writers profiled, as there isn't really enough travel narrative to include it solidly in that genre. Still, I found it a good introduction to Laing's high writing quality, making me look forward to read her other books.

[Sean Barrs · Rating 2 out of 5]

Goodreads winner!

This book provides insight into the drinking habits of six authors and the consequential alcoholism. It is evident that a great deal of research has gone into this as it shines through their experiences. The author has written it, for the most part, in an engaging and informative way. I enjoyed reading some parts of it.

My major criticism is that the author has filled the pages with her own experiences with alcoholism along with her childhood and how the two relate. I don’t see the relevance of this. We’re supposed to read about the link between creative genius and addiction not the ability to criticise and addiction.

[Agnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interessante , soprattutto per me che sono nel periodo " scrittori nord-americani-recenti" ( Cheever, Carver, Yates, Ford etc) .
In questo libro l'autrice racconta - con uno stile molto scorrevole e con frequenti citazioni delle loro opere - di Hemingway, T. Williams. Cheever, Carver e dei loro problemi con la dipendenza da alcool . Olivia Laing sa di cosa sta parlando e lo fa molto bene .

[Gail Slater · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Trip to Echo Spring is a combination biography, travelogue, and memoir by an author who Amtraked her way around the US to catch the elan and times of six alcoholic writers. Though often drunk, drugged, disorderly, or locked up, they produced some of our best literature in the 20th C; they were always sick and suffering. I ’ve been humbled to read how they made sense of their mangled lives in their writings, and for a few, in their recoveries. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway drank and wrote before much was known about addiction, and, in a way, those authors never had a chance against their staggering alcohol consumption. In his journal, Fitzgerald counted a sober writing day as imbibing only beer, 30 glasses of beer. He ruined his health and died young. Hemingway wrote a credo on the benefits of alcohol as “the only relief in modern life,” but he was a suicide. John Berryman created an alcoholic alter ego,a character “amazed at the never-ending ability of his disease to defend itself. Still he has hope,” and then his creator jumped off a bridge. John Cheever and Raymond Carver met at the prestigious U of Iowa Writers Workshop and actually drank together. They got sober in AA meetings (Yes!), a miracle considering their disastrous histories with the bottle, but hard-won recovery rewarded them (and us) years more of their work. Tennessee Williams’s life story touched me deeply and sent me back to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof where his huge compassion for three heavy drinkers has helped me see them differently. This book is compulsively readable about important writers deserving of Olivia Laing’s pertinent research and wonderful prose.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Täydellistä Laing-laatua. En tiedä montaakaan nykykirjoittajaa, jolla on näin kattava taito, ymmärrys ja empatia ihmislajin halveksittuja ja välteltyjä piirteitä ja addiktioita kohtaan, kyky nähdä syrjään jätetyt rikkinäisiä ihmisinä syyttelyn ja sättimisen sijaan. Mistä aiheesta Laing kirjoittaakin, hän käsittelee sitä kauneimmin, mihin olen missään törmännyt.

[Nickolas Butler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Olivia Laing's writing is beautiful and evocative and her exploration of alcoholism and American writing is noteworthy because of her deep sense of empathy for the authors she focuses on. It is much easier to criticize or lampoon Hemingway or Carver than it is to delve deeply into their biographies in search of exactly *WHY* they are so very flawed, and talented. Her writing about Key West, in particular, was lush, and after suffering through a historically cold Wisconsin winter, a welcome portal into a warmer, greener world.

[Robert Vaughan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The way this book moves between memoir, biography, travelogue is fascinating and seamless. Spellbinding. And of course, those six authors who have meant so much to the modern writer or reader. And alcohol as binding substance. My visiting friend and writer, Meg Tuite, turned me on to this book. I devoured it in less than three days. Now I want to read Laing's first book, and have already ordered her next. Do yourself a favor. Pick any of her works, and you will be so happy you did. Then slip into the sublime page and dazzle yourself.

[Paul Ataua · Rating 3 out of 5]

In a trip to Echo Spring, Laing draws together six American writers with the common theme of alcoholism and how that alcoholism made or unmade their work and life. It is good on description, has some interesting anecdotes, but is somewhat disappointing when it moves into interpretation. Mildly interesting.

[Come Musica · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I Dodici passi degli Alcolisti anonimi

1. Abbiamo ammesso di essere impotenti di fronte all’alcol e che le nostre vite erano divenute incontrollabili.

2. Siamo giunti a credere che un Potere più grande di noi potrebbe ricondurci alla ragione.

3. Abbiamo preso la decisione di affidare le nostra volontà e le nostre vite alla cura di Dio, come noi potemmo concepirLo.

4. Abbiamo fatto un inventario morale profondo e senza paura di noi stessi.

5. Abbiamo ammesso di fronte a Dio, a noi stessi e a un altro essere umano, l’esatta natura dei nostri torti.

6. Eravamo completamente pronti ad accettare che Dio eliminasse tutti questi difetti di carattere.

7. Gli abbiamo chiesto con umiltà di eliminare i nostri difetti.

8. Abbiamo fatto un elenco di tutte le persone cui abbiamo fatto del male e siamo diventati pronti a rimediare ai danni recati loro.

9. Abbiamo fatto direttamente ammenda verso tali persone, laddove possibile, tranne quando, così facendo, avremmo potuto recare danno a loro oppure ad altri.

10. Abbiamo continuato a fare il nostro inventario personale e, quando ci siamo trovati in torto, lo abbiamo subito ammesso.

11. Abbiamo cercato attraverso la preghiera e la meditazione di migliorare il nostro contatto cosciente con Dio, come noi potemmo concepirLo, pregandoLo solo di farci conoscere la Sua volontà nei nostri riguardi e di darci la forza di eseguirla.

12. Avendo ottenuto un risveglio spirituale come risultato di questi Passi, abbiamo cercato di portare questo messaggio agli alcolisti e di mettere in pratica questi principi in tutte le nostre attività.”

Olivia Laing in “Viaggio a Echo Spring”, partendo dalla sua storia personale, investiga il mondo degli alcolisti tra gli scrittori, da Francis Scott Fitzgerald a Ernest Hemingway, da Tennessee Williams a John Cheever, passando per John Berryman e Raymond Carver.

Un’analisi lucida su come l’alcol crei dipendenza e porti distruzione, anche nelle vite di chi poi ha consegnato ai posteri delle grandi opere letterarie.

“Fra le recensioni più positive ce n’è una di Joan Didion pubblicata sul New York Times. Spesso lungimirante, e sempre lucida, la scrittrice notò che Farragut aveva subito

[…] una purificazione, un periodo di sofferenza indispensabile per partecipare di nuovo alla cerimonia dell’innocenza, e in quest’ottica il quesito su quando si sarebbe «ripulito» ha un impatto considerevole. A dire il vero, è la domanda che Cheever si è sempre posto – quando sarò pulito era la domanda che tornava su tutti quei prati verdi – ma non l’ha mai posta così apertamente, e con un’arroganza stilistica così sublime.”

[Jeff Bursey · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this somewhat light read (despite the potentially heavy topic), Olivia Laing guides us through her thoughts and impressions about alcoholics generally and six alcoholic writers in particular: Cheever, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Berryman, T. Williams, and Carver.

Laing's way with imagery and her ability to tie together various threads from the writers' lives saves this book from being a series of sketches. I think her inspiration to use trains (for the most part) to get to various parts of the u.s. that these writers called home was a good idea, if perhaps not taken full advantage of. (For instance, left almost completely untouched is what the writers thought of trains themselves.) No excuses are made for the writers' behaviour or for when what they turn out is unsuccessful art. There is a biographical element to this book that Laing uses sparingly and effectively to help bridge her life with the artworks of the figures under consideration.

[Anna Baillie-Karas · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating account of six writers & their battles with alcoholism, and part travel memoir as Olivia Laing visits their home towns in America. I learnt much about these writers - all fascinating characters - & the destructive side of their addictions. Interesting & sad to ponder why men of such talent kept ruining it - & what more they could have achieved. Laing is compassionate & her writing is exquisite. A great read.

[Lucrezia · Rating 5 out of 5]

All’epoca fui colpita dal fatto che, recandosi alla tomba di uno scrittore, tutti quegli sconosciuti anonimi e sofferenti riponessero la loro fede nei racconti, nella capacità della letteratura di sedare il senso di strazio, di farci sentire meno irrimediabilmente soli. Pensai a quando ero bambina, al fatto che iniziai a leggere perché c’erano cose della mia vita che non riuscivo a sostenere. Nel 1969, sei anni prima di diventare sobrio, la Paris Review chiese a John Cheever se davanti alla macchina da scrivere si sentisse una divinità. La sua risposta può essere vista come un delirio – la parola che Berryman cancellò dalle bozze della sua intervista. Ma forse non lo era. Forse questa va presa per buona. No, non mi sono mai sentito una divinità. No, il senso è quello di rendersi utili a una causa. Tutti abbiamo quel senso di padronanza, fa parte della nostra vita: ce l’abbiamo in amore, nel lavoro che ci piace. È una sensazione di estasi, semplice. Il senso è che «così posso rendermi utile, e posso farlo per sempre». Ti lascia dentro una sensazione meravigliosa. In poche parole, dà senso alla propria vita. Pensai a tutti loro. Pensai al Fitzgerald ragazzo, schiena dritta e pantaloni di tela bianca, che cantava Far Away in Colon Town temendo di morire dalla vergogna. Pensai al viaggio di Berryman a Tampa per il funerale di suo padre («come mi sono comportato in macchina»), a Cheever stretto in un completo di serge blu troppo piccolo, intrappolato nella «pungente solitudine della mia adolescenza». Pensai a Williams, quando ancora lo chiamavano Tom, mentre sfrecciava per le strade di St Louis cercando di calmare il suo cuore che andava a mille. Pensai a Hemingway, quando a nove anni, in una lettera rivolta al padre, la più vecchia giunta fino a noi, diceva: «Ho preso sei vongole nel fiume e del frumento alto sei piedi». Pensai a tutto quello che avevano scritto; al senso che avevano dato alle loro vite tormentate. E seduta lì nell’erba in cima alla scogliera, capii perché amavo così tanto il racconto di R e del pesce tagliato a metà. Tutti in qualche modo siamo come R. Nel senso che tutti abbiamo dentro di noi qualcosa che può essere rifiutato; che sotto la luce sembra d’argento. Certo, possiamo negarlo, o buttarlo via. Possiamo odiarlo a tal punto da ucciderci di alcol. Alla fine, però, l’unica cosa da fare è mantenere il controllo, mettere insieme i pezzi. È a quel punto che comincia il recupero. È a quel punto che la seconda vitai – quella buona – può avere inizio.

[Jessica Anne · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm going to write a shitty review along the lines of why this book is shitty (aka, I'm going to make it personal when I should be objective).

I like Olivia Laing. I like why she chose all male white American alcoholic authors ("because I liked them"), and I like how she writes about landing on airport runways with slowly pulsating lights in the night. Her sentences often take off in a very beautiful way.

But.

I wanted to read about writers and alcoholism, not about her planes and trains across America. I wanted answers about why authors are alcoholics, and what it means for their work...or at least speculations. Instead, I found a long-winded personal narrative. Really, the story's just a travel log with a lot of dismal facts about miserable people thrown in.

It's only in the author interview, on page 342, that she explains the book's real purpose:

"[As a] writer who is interested in assessing loss, which I guess is my true subject...."

Okay, I definitely got loss out of the book. Pain. Abandonment. Abuse. Meticulously researched accounts of each hardship each man experienced. Each of these writers had a miserable life--so terrible that I almost forget they ever created anything beautiful. But most people don't need to read a book to realize alcoholism creates pain. Most people already know Fitzgerald's golden years turned sour quick, with beautiful Zelda withering in a mental institution, or that Papa Hemingway shot himself, old and overweight and unable to shoot Kudu in Africa anymore.

I was hoping for something a little more daring. Something that asked more unusual questions than "how much pain can one person experience?" Something more than runway lights leading down a straight road to a straight answer: that alcoholics are miserable.

[Richard · Rating 2 out of 5]

A minority report about an infuriating read.

The Trip to Echo Springs, is part biography, part travel writing, part psychology, part literary criticism, and only partially satisfying in whole or in part.

If you've paid attention to writers, you've been through some amount of discussion about writers and drinking, and writers and suicide, and drunk writers who have committed suicide, so this book is nothing new in terms of subject matter. There's also not much new about alcohol theory or medicine.

Olivia Laing spends varying amounts of time with Tennessee Williams, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, John Cheever, John Berryman, and Raymond Carver, and the more time spent with any of the given, the more she wore me out. There's detail, and there's the telling detail, and it's the latter that drives narrative - Ms. Laing spends too much time in the former, and her insights are neither subtle, nor particularly illuminating. That being said, I did pick up some interesting info/gossip about Cheever, Berryman, and Carver.

Unfortunately, the author also includes her tales of travelling to salient locations in each writers career in the overall story.

Olivia Laing is the stranger you sit next to at a bar who engages you in an interesting conversation only to turn it into a monologue that goes on and on reducing you to a series of "uh-huh's," as you rush to finish your drink, and wish you'd never looked in her direction.

[Kristin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great for information about alcoholism and anecdotes about some alcoholic writers (still asking myself, though, why no female writers were discussed). Not sure she satisfactorily answers the question why writers drink. She suggests that some of these writers' best work could not have been written without the help of huge doses of alcohol, which I find very hard to believe. I'm not sure that anything of lasting merit or artistic value could be produced in a state of alcoholic oblivion. She also seems to suggest that these writers' work ultimately suffered from their self-destructive habit, which of course completely contradicts her primary thesis, though it does express what I believe to be true for the vast majority of creative people.

I had read a very moving essay by Laing on loneliness, and found her writing to be exquisite in that piece. I went to the bookstore and asked for anything by her, so sure was I that I had found a true gem of a writer. Was disappointed by this book, however. Except for the occasional passage of inspired prose or the odd intuitive turn of phrase, I'd rate the writing jn this as fairly mediocre. That said, I will give her the benefit of the doubt and read her To the River with the hope that I might find some of what moved me so much in her loneliness piece.

[M.R. Dowsing · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a sort of combination of travel writing, lit crit, biography and autobiography as Laing travels around America visiting places connected with Raymond Carver, John Cheever, F.Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennesse Williams and John Berryman, all of whom were alcoholics. The subtitle is unfortunate I think because it doesn't explain why writers drink or even give any evidence that writers drink more than anyone else. Both the journey and the book feel self-indulgent, but it's well-written and researched and I did find it interesting despite my misgivings. A worthwhile book, then, for anyone into with an interest in American literature, alcoholism or the relationship between creativity and addiction.

[Abby Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The Trip to Echo Spring" is a thoroughly researched and empathetic exploration of six American writers and their relationships to alcoholism. Through their stories, and Laing's own, we come to appreciate the complex motivations behind both writing and drinking. Laing's ambitious approach combined with her mastery of style and imagery make "Echo Spring" an equally enthralling and heart-wrenching read.

[Hugo Pineda O'Neill · Rating 4 out of 5]

NO ES UNA RESEÑA: ES MI DESAHOGO

''Bebo porque mejora mi trabajo. Bebo porque soy demasiado sensible para vivir en el mundo sin alcohol.''

Me encanta la literatura, no concibo un día sin poder escribir, incluso cuando la inspiración no llega, escribo alguna nimiedad, al igual que el alcohol, siento en mi garganta el ligero calor del ron, el amargo sabor de la ginebra, la tormenta ahogada del whisky que toca el paladar para posarse sobre el, todas los días.

En la mas pequeña soledad encuentro una excusa para tomar, para escribir, y aunque creo que mis problemas me empujan a ambos vicios, son mis vicios los que me empujan a ambos problemas.

''Cuando bebo, mis emociones se elevan y las plasmo en un relato. Pero después se hace difícil mantener la razón y la emoción en equilibrio. Las historias que escribo cuando estoy sobrio son estúpidas, como la de la adivinación. Estaba todo razonado, no había sentimiento»''

''Empezaba a creer que beber podía ser un modo de desaparecer del mundo, o al menos de escabullirse del lugar designado que uno tiene en él''

Cuando me siento a escribir, tengo la certeza de que estoy muerto, no hay forma en la que me sienta superior, o como un Dios. Comienzo a teclear, y cuando empiezan a caer las palabras y se hilan con lo que siento, empiezo a darle un poco de color a la muerte hacia la que camino sin descanso. Acabo de soltar esta verdad a medias que sofoca, y me siento un poco mas vivo.

''Me refiero a que todos llevamos algo dentro que puede despertar rechazo; que a la luz puede parecer plateado. Puedes negarlo o intentar tirarlo a la basura cueste lo que cueste. O aborrecerlo tanto que bebes hasta quedar medio muerto. Al fin y al cabo, sin embargo, la única opción que te queda es asirte a ti mismo, dominarte y recoger las piezas rotas. En ese momento es cuando empieza la recuperación. Allí es donde empieza la segunda vida, la buena.''

Un libro en forma de gesto que acaricio para empezar la segunda vida que merezco...