Written on and off during the winter of 1980-81, this collection of short prose starts in a relatively literary fashion, with the account of a clandestine visit of a masseuse to a priest who can no longer cope with his celibacy, and ends in a profoundly futuristic manner with an account of evolutionary progress towards a definitive Beyond, as envisaged by a radical philosopher. In between, there comes a fairly balanced alternation between prosodic and philosophic subjects ... as we follow the voyeuristic pleasures of a man covertly watching his wife getting dressed from the comfort of his early-morning bed; explore the evolutionary revelations of a de Chardinesque gnostic in the face of atheistic unbelief; witness the horror of a Mondrianesque ascetic, whose rural day-trip out of London with some friends proves to be more unsettling than he had bargained for; and go beyond conventional concepts of the Millennium, as of Millennialism, with a revolutionary thinker who believes that only when human brains are artificially supported and sustained will there be any prospect of heavenly salvation of a definitive order. - A Centretruths Editorial.
John James O'Loughlin was born in Salthill, Co. Galway, the Republic of Ireland, of Irish- and British-born parents in 1952. Following a parental split while still a child, he was brought to England by his mother and grandmother (who had initially returned to Ireland with intent to stay) in the mid-50s and subsequently attended schools in Aldershot (Hampshire), and, following the death and repatriation of his grandmother, Carshalton Beeches (Surrey), where, despite an enforced change of denomination from Catholic to Protestant in consequence of having been put into care by his mother, he attended a state school. Graduating in 1970 with an assortment of CSE's (Certificate of Secondary Education) and GCE's (General Certificate of Education), including history and music, he moved the comparatively short distance up 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. After a brief flirtation with Redhill Technical College back in Surrey, where he had enrolled to study history, he returned to his former job in the West End but retired from the ABRSM in 1976 due to a combination of factors, and began to dedicate himself to writing which, despite a brief spell as a computer tutor at Hornsey Management Agency in the late '80s and early '90s, he has continued with ever since. His novels include Changing Worlds (1976), Cross-Purposes (1979), Thwarted Ambitions (1980), Sublimated Relations (1981), and Deceptive Motives (1982). From the mid-80s Mr O'Loughlin dedicated himself exclusively to philosophy, his true literary vocation, and has penned more than sixty titles of a philosophical order, including Devil and God - The Omega Book (1985-6), Towards the Supernoumenon (1987), Elemental Spectra (1988-9), and Philosophical Truth (1991-2). John O'Loughlin lives in Crouch End, north London, England, UK, where he continues to regard himself as a kind of bohemian intellectual.
