Olivia Laing's The Trip to Echo Spring focuses on six authors whose lives meet at the juncture of creativity and alcoholism. While Laing (To the River) acknowledges she had many alcoholic writers to choose from, the half dozen she selected justify and reward her nuanced attentions: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Cheever, Raymond Carver and John Berryman.
The Trip to Echo Spring--named for the bourbon favored by the maudlin Brick in Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof--is partly literary criticism, while biographical detail reveals the subjects' intersections with one another in life as well as literature. There are hints of travelogue as Laing crisscrosses North America to visit crucial locations in these writers' lives, from Hemingway's Key West to Fitzgerald and Berryman's St. Paul, Minn., to Port Angeles, Wash., where Raymond Carver finished his life.
She delves into the biology and psychology of of alcoholism, and touches on her own upbringing as the child of alcoholics. While she focuses on the relationship between writing and drinking, another part of her journey is personal--but her history with drunks is only gradually revealed and never takes center stage.
All the disparate elements come together elegantly in Laing's quietly contemplative prose. She is sensitive to the struggles of these tortured men (among them several suicides) and deeply appreciative of their accomplishments, but also clear-headed about their shortcomings and their abusive treatment of others as well as themselves. A lovely piece of writing in its own right, The Trip to Echo Spring is a fine tribute to artists as well as a lament for their addiction. --Julia Jenkins, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia