The Trip to Echo Spring: On Writers and Drinking

Featuring Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Carver, Cheever, Tennessee Williams, and John Berryman, Olivia Laing follows the literary path and the bottles left in the wake. It's a sad book, on balance, as the extreme talent of these men is offset by their severe mental strain and the herculean self-medicating in which they indulged to dull the pain. The book offers a nice counterbalance to [Max Perkins: Editor of Genius], which sometimes looked at Hemingway and Fitzgerald with rose-colored glasses. Lang demolishes any rosiness, exposing the bourbon-tinged truth. Cheever gets a lions' share of the page time, which is a refreshing change given the other company usually attracts the spotlight. And Cheever actually managed to pull himself out of the show more bottle. It was also nice to learn about John Berryman, who is not a common figure of attention, and was the only poet here. Laing necessarily examines some of the underlying mental difficulties these men faced, and some of the precipitating factors that led them to the booze. And she also examines their published writings for how some of their personal feelings about booze and its effects on them leaked into the fiction. Most interesting, there are several deep dives into journaling and other writings done by the men while in rehabilitation facilities - terribly interesting to see their shifting perceptions as they go through rehab multiple times and come out slightly changed each time.

5 bones!!!!!
Highly recommended. show less

This is one of those "think I'll read a few pages of this" books that pulled me in and captivated me from start to finish. There's no easy way to categorize this book, as it includes literary criticism, biography, memoir, reflections on addiction and recovery...and much more that I'm not thinking of right now. Laing expertly weaves all this together, looking at the role of addiction in the lives and works of six writers (F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever, Raymond Carver), She never talks down to the reader, nor does she trivialize her subjects; she doesn't oversimplify, but neither does she needlessly complicate matters when a direct approach is needed. She is willing to call out show more cowardice in these writers' lives and she is also generous in pointing out courage. The book is not only about recovery; it is as if she has internalized the twelve steps within the writing itself, seeking what is true as best she can, behind all of our posturing and all of our justifications and all of our excuses (speaking as an addict in recovery myself). Nicely done. show less

Olivia Liang's book "The Trip to Echo Spring: On writers and drinking" had a fantastic concept -- delving into the reasons why so many successful writers have a problem with alcohol -- but I didn't care for the way the book was written.

Liang spends a lot of time talking about herself and her travels, and she also spends a lot of time jumping around in the stories about various writers such as John Cheever, Earnest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald in a super jarring way.

I found the stories about John Cheever to be the most interesting part of this book (so much so that I'll likely search for a biography of him at some point.) Echo Spring felt like a lost opportunity to put together something great.

Eloquent study of alcoholism as analyzed, rationalized, denied and variously owned by six brilliant alcoholic writers: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Cheever, Raymond Carver and John Berryman. Less an overarching study of why so many writers abuse alcohol than an intimate examination of why these particular men did and how they articulated their struggles. But that's here, too: "Hunger, liquor, need, pieces, wrote. A sense was building in me that there was a hidden relationship between the two strategies of writing and drinking and that both had to do with a feeling that something precious had gone to pieces, and a desire at once to mend it--to give it fitness and shape, in Cheever's phrase--and to deny show more that it was so. Hence those obsessive retellings: hence Nagasakit, Nick Adams, Henry Pussycat, Dick Diver, Estabrook and Coverley." Would've preferred a bit less autobiography, but as odyssey, the road trip works--and is beautifully written. show less

A sad, beautiful, and important book. Many critics and biographers have speculated, pontificated or poked fun at the symbiosis between writers and the bottle, but Olivia Laing delves into their psyches in a quest to truly understand.

Focusing on six well-known writer-alcoholics—Hemingway (of course!), Scott Fitzgerald (of course!), Tennessee Williams, John Cheever, John Berryman and Raymond Carver—Laing, a British author and critic with a background in science, set out on a trip around the USA to visit the places these men inhabited, read through mountains of letters and journals, and speak to surviving relatives, while poring through their published works, trawling for clues, aching for answers. Two committed suicide; two knowingly show more drank themselves to death. Laing strips the romance and the condemnation from their life stories and paints a picture of six troubled, not particularly likeable, artists.

The book, then, is mostly biography, part journalism about the physiology and psychology of alcoholism, part literary criticism, tied together with interludes of travelogue and memoir, the latter to reveal her deep personal motivations behind the project. The strongest writing is in her descriptions of place, in which the language soars, and Laing discovers meaning in the way the writer’s own setting affected his soul, as well as her own.

It’s almost an involuntary reaction to question the author for focusing on six American white men of Christian background. I’m not sure if it was her intention, but it seems to me that narrowing her enquiry to writers with certain similarities of background was necessary in this first foray toward finding a common answer to the question of the subtitle—Why Writers Drink. Does she find the answer? Maybe not, but she does find many surprising things in common in their own private probing in their journals, which she shares with the reader. Most of all, she achieves a certain intimacy with each writer, by distilling their excuses and behaviors into literary liquor which is both absorbing and disturbing to read.

There is a certain danger in plumbing the souls of erudite alcoholics—a deep, liquid sadness permeates every page, which lingers for days after finishing. I have to say that my admiration for these writers was knocked off its pedestal, but I’m left with a gut-wrenching empathy for each of them.

If you are a writer, or know one, or care about writers, I strongly, wholeheartedly urge you to read this outstanding book. show less

I thought I would love The Trip to Echo Spring. It was billed as an examination of the dark secrets and self-destructive tendencies of six major 20th century authors (F.S. Fitzgerald, E. Hemingway, T. Williams, J. Berryman, J. Cheever and R. Carver), with an eye toward answering the eternal question: why are so many great writers also alcoholics? In keeping with the current trend towards genre-blending, the narrative also included the author's memoirs of her dysfunctional childhood, scientific information on the neurobiology of alcoholism, and even travel writing, as the author described her visits to locations associated with the six authors she profiled. It sounded like this book would be right up my alley.

The reality was show more disappointing. I found The Trip to Echo Spring difficult to stay with and filled with self-consciously lyrical writing that failed to move me. The narrative was annoyingly diffuse; perhaps its lack of focus was the result of trying to cover so much literary ground, summarize so many plots, and encompass so many genres.

The stories of all six men have been better told elsewhere. show less

Olivia Laing recounts her travels around the United States, visiting places associated with six American authors (she apologises that they are all dead white males: Scott Fitzgerald; Ernest Hemingway; Tennessee Williams; John Cheever; John Berryman; Raymond Carver) who all had problems with alcohol.
This is not biography or literary criticism, although it contains some of both. This is an enjoyable literary travelogue about alcoholism and American authors, with some reflections on Laing’s own life. Laing’s style has an easy familiarity, even when quoting technical medical jargon about alcoholism, and although the potted biographies, literary criticism and travelogue don’t seamlessly blend together, there is plenty to enjoy.

I had show more not read any Tennessee Williams prior to this book, although aware of the plays, and only had name awareness of Berryman, but this didn’t particularly reduce my interest in the book. However it was a shame that Laing didn’t write about Carson McCullers. show less