<p>Why were so many authors of the greatest works of literature consumed by alcoholism? In <i>The Trip to Echo Spring</i>, Olivia Laing takes a journey across America, examining the links between creativity and drink in the overlapping work and lives of six extraordinary men: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever and Raymond Carver. <br><br>From Hemingway''s Key West to Williams''s New Orleans, Laing pieces together a topographical map of alcoholism, and strips away the tangle of mythology to reveal the terrible price creativity can exert.</p>