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Last (W)rites returns us,
after a brief interlude during which I wrote some chronologically numerical
philosophy, to the cyclical style adopted in From Punishment to Grace
(1994), albeit with the use of side titles rather than numerals principally,
and with a view to bringing to completion a task which really began several
years ago ... when I boldly set out on the long and often difficult path that
leads to Truth.Little did I realize, at
the time, that not only would I eventually get to the Truth (which, in
any case, I maintain no-one had previously done to anything like the same
extent) but ... actually overhaul it, in what seems in places like a literary
parallel to Heaven or, at any rate, to a sort of literary heaven, albeit one
that is still far from definitive in relation to my entire oeuvre and
therefore still leaves something, in retrospect, to be desired, despite my high
claims for it at the time (1995).For,
in point of fact, Last (W)rites, despite the pun in the title, was far
from being my final work, coming in at opus 61 in a 122-opus oeuvre. –
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 venues for the Board's several examiners 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-cum-office-skills tutor at Hornsey Management Agency in the local 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 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 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).
