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Welcome to the AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES of
BECOMING AND BEING
by John O’Loughlin of Centretruths Digital Media
Links to the files of
which follow the remarks below:–
Divided into two
parts, the first of which is autobiographical and the second biographical, this
project strives to outline my development as a writer and the influences, both
fictional and philosophical, which shaped me over the years leading up to 1982. The first part, containing subjects ranging
from sex and politics to health and writers, is slightly Nietzschean in its
speculative approach to autobiography, whilst the second and more voluminous
part, which deals with the estimable likes of John Cowper Powys, D.H. Lawrence,
Aldous Huxley, Hermann Hesse, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Arthur Koestler,
Lawrence Durrell, Henry Miller, and George Orwell, is intended to provide a
biographical summary and fairly blunt appraisal of authors whose works were to
inspire me during my formative years as a writer. It is as though they were the beings whom I
was eventually destined to become
or, rather, that I became being
– and hence an original writer in my own right – via them. Finally there is an appendix comprised of an
introduction to and lists of reading material borrowed from my local library
over a twelve-year period from 1977–89, which should intrigue those interested
to discover how a self-taught and even self-made writer can fare with regard to
the acquirement of a literary culture that owes little or nothing to school or
college, and somewhat transcends the restricted parameters of one’s high-school
qualifications. – John O'Loughlin.
CONTENTS
PART ONE: AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES
SEX
BECOMING A WRITER
BECOMING AN IRISHMAN
DO I TAKE MY POLITICS SERIOUSLY
HOW I RELATE TO MY MOTHER
AM I THE NEW MESSIAH
LITERARY INFLUENCES
MUSICAL TASTES
WHAT KIND OF WRITER
HOW DO I VIEW MY FUTURE
PART TWO: BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES
JOHN COWPER POWYS
D.H. LAWRENCE
ALDOUS HUXLEY
HERMANN HESSE
ALBERT CAMUS
JEAN-PAUL SARTRE
ARTHUR KOESTLER
LAWRENCE DURRELL
HENRY MILLER
GEORGE ORWELL
APPENDIX
INTRODUCTION
FIRST LIST
SECOND LIST
All files Copyright © 2011 John O’Loughlin
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Email: john-oloughlin@centretruths.com
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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 ethnically-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, quit the Associated Board in 1976 and began to pursue a literary vocation which,
despite a brief spell as a computer and office-skills tutor at Hornsey Management Agency (within the YMCA) 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 Deceptive
Motives (1981). 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).
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