Journey to the Source of Echo. Why Writers Drink

The book by British writer and essayist Olivia Lang, "Journey to the Source of Echo" (2013), is dedicated to the mutual influence of alcoholism and literary creativity. In an attempt 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 Lang analyzes a wide range of biographical and scientific material: letters, diaries, interviews, works, memoirs, articles on neurobiology and addiction science. The travel notes she keeps while journeying through 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, Lang skillfully combines facts and conjectures, switching the narrative register between her experience and external history to trace the connection between psychological trauma and the craving for verbal creation and intoxicating self-destruction.