Links to the files of
which follow the remarks below:–
Conceived in loosely
cyclical form, this 1994 project, which lists as Opus 56 in an 122-opus oeuvre,
harks back to those ‘supernotational’ works which date from the mid-80s,
comprising essayistic aphorisms and aphoristic notes, in respect of the greater
variety of length and treatment between the contents, some of which are
arguably aphoristic, others essayistic, but all of which thematically follow
from my previous philosophical work, including the four volumes of aphoristic
purism, in a no-less comprehensively methodical vein. – John O’Loughlin.
John O’Loughlin was born in Salthill, Galway, the Republic
of Ireland,
of mixed 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) 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 schools in
Aldershot, Hants, and, with an enforced change of
denomination from Catholic to Protestant in consequence of having been put into 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 WC1, where 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, he returned to his former job in the West End
but, due to a combination of personal factors, quit the ABRSM in 1976 and began to pursue a literary vocation which,
despite a brief spell as a computer 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 numerous 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).
