Why is it that some of the greatest works of literature…
have been produced by writers in the grip of alcoholism, an addiction that cost them happiness and caused harm to those who loved them?
Olivia Laing examines the link between creativity and alcohol through the work and lives of six extraordinary men: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever and Raymond Carver.
As she travels from Cheever’s New York to Williams’ New Orleans, from Hemingway’s Key West to Carver’s Port Angeles, she …