CROSS-PURPOSES: This novel moves beyond the
largely autobiographical concerns of my earlier experiments in the genre -
CHANGING WORLDS and FIXED LIMITS - towards a more fictional integrity which led
me by the nose, so to speak, into contexts and situations largely outside the
domain of personal experience. To be sure, the subjectivity of my earlier work is in some degree still present
(witness the opening chapter ... with its highly philosophical considerations),
but it is now subordinated to the unfolding narrative ... as we follow the
fortunes of James Kelly, a self-styled philosopher, through successive
love-affairs which clash with his loyalties to friends and benefactors alike,
culminating in deception and tragedy for all concerned. One would think that CROSS-PURPOSES was a
philosophical-novel-turned-romance, and so, up to a point, it may well be. But it is also a tribute, in no small
measure, to both Lawrence Durrell and Henry Miller;
though one might be forgiven for detecting an implicit condemnation of the
latter in the 'Paris chapter', as I like to think of Chapter 7, where Kelly's
attitude to sexual promiscuity is concerned! However, that is still my favourite chapter in what is probably my best
novel.
Copyright © 2011 John O;Loughlin
