Journey to the Source of Echo. Why Writers Drink

The book by British writer and essayist Olivia Laing "Journey to the Source of Echo" (2013) is dedicated to the mutual influence of alcoholism and literary creativity. In trying to find the reason for the harmful addiction of such American writers as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Cheever, John Berryman, and Raymond Carver, Olivia Laing analyzes a wide range of biographical and scientific material: letters, diaries, interviews, works, memoirs, articles on neurobiology and narcology. The travel notes she keeps while journeying through the significant places for her heroes intertwine with personal memories and reflections on the nature of addiction. As in her later works, in this artistic investigation, Laing skillfully combines facts and conjectures, switching the narrative register between her own experience and external history, to trace the connection between psychological trauma and the craving for verbal creation and intoxicating self-destruction.