FIXED LIMITS: If my first novel CHANGING WORLDS
betrays the influence (through souped-up interior
monologue) of James Joyce on my early fiction, then the chief inspiration
behind this fictional journal was undoubtedly Jean-Paul Sartre or, rather,
Sartre's first novel Nausea,
which made such a profound impression on me ... that I simply felt I had to
attempt something similar - albeit within a necessarily different milieu and
social setting. This was in the autumn of 1976, and the result was an account of some three weeks in the life of the
very same character whom we first encountered as a disillusioned clerk in the
earlier novel, but whose existence here, as a budding writer, is nothing short
of a spiritual rebirth! Now that Michael
Savage has become or, at any rate, is in the process of becoming his
intellectual self ... we are led into an even more subjective world than that
of his previous incarnation, with further opportunities for both
autobiographical and philosophical speculation on my part. In fact, FIXED LIMITS should be regarded as
the sequel to CHANGING WORLDS, without prior reference to which much of its
subject-matter and settings would seem difficult, if not impossible, to
understand. For me, this was the literary Black Hole which led into a new universe of fictional writings thereafter,
beyond the reach of my early mentors.
Copyright ©
2011 John O'Loughlin
