Links to the files of
which follow the remarks below:–
Another
volume of short prose in which a number of my principal philosophical themes
are recycled in literary guise for the benefit of a wider understanding, A Selfish Man begins with the title piece, a first-person narrative by an
advocate of spiritual selfishness, and winds its way through fifteen other examples
of my art in this field, culminating in a section of interior monologues which
features twelve different thinkers who successively elaborate on their likes
and dislikes from a similar ideological standpoint, thereby establishing a
unity of mind which transcends their phenomenal differences.In between these two extremes there are
varying amounts of unity and disunity between the characters, but all are
caught in the throes of a vigorous philosophical debate.For here, as in other kindred works, action
is subordinate to thought, whether we are dealing with a drive to the cinema, a
couple watching television, reflections on a soapbox orator, a clandestine
affair, or the vicissitudes of a revolutionary politician.Sometimes the characters have names,
sometimes not.Sometimes they are a
fairly transparent projection of me, at other times a degree of fictional
objectivity has gone into their fashioning.Whatever the case, A Selfish Man, dating from 1983, bears ample
witness to this philosopher-artist's search for literary perfection through
thought. – John O'Loughlin.
John O’Loughlin was born in Salthill, Galway, the Republic
of Ireland,
of Irish- and British-born parents in 1952. Following a parental split partly due to his mother's Aldershot origins (her father, a Presbyterian from Donegal, had served in the British Army),
he was brought to England by his mother and grandmother (who upon the death of her husband had initially returned to Ireland after a lengthy marital absence from Athenry) in the mid-50s and, having had the benefit of private tuition from a Catholic priest, subsequently attended St. Joseph's and St. George's RC schools in Aldershot, Hants, and, with an enforced change of
denomination from Catholic to Protestant in consequence of having been sent to a children's home
by his mother upon the death and repatriation of his ethnicallyp-protective grandmother, he went on to attend first Barrow Hedges Primary School in Carshalton Beeches, Surrey, and then Carshalton High School for Boys. Upon leaving the latter in pre-GCSE era 1970 with an
assortment of CSEs
(Certificate of Secondary Education) and GCEs
(General Certificate of Education), including history and music, he moved to London and went on, via two short-lived
jobs, to work at the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music in Bedford
Square, where, with some prior experience himself of having sat and passed (with merit) an ABRSM Gd.4 piano exam, he eventually became responsible for booking examination venues throughout Britain and Ireland.
After a brief flirtation with further education at Redhill Technical College back in Surrey, where he had enrolled to do English and History A Levels, he returned to his former job in the West End
but, due to a combination of personal factors, handed in his notice at the Associated Board in 1976 and began to pursue a literary vocation which,
despite a brief spell as a computer tutor at Hornsey Management Agency in the late '80s and
early '90s, he has steadfastly continued with ever since. His novels include Changing Worlds (1976), An Interview
Reviewed (1979), Secret
Exchanges (1980), Sublimated
Relations(1981), and False Pretences (1982). Since the mid-80s John O'Loughlin has dedicated himself almost exclusively to
philosophy, which he regards as his true literary vocation, and has penned several titles of a
philosophical nature, including Devil and
God (1985–6), Towards
the Supernoumenon(1987), Elemental Spectra (1988–9), Philosophical Truth (1991–2) and,
more recently, The Best
of All Possible Worlds (2008), The Centre of Truth
(2009), Insane but not Mad (2011) and Philosophic Flights of Poetic Fancy (2012).
