CROSS-PURPOSES: Rolling at the Ball

John O'Loughlin

mar. 2022 · Centretruths Digital Media

O tej e-knjigi

This novel moves beyond the largely autobiographical concerns of the author's earlier experiments in the novel genre ('Changing Worlds' and 'Fixed Limits') towards a more fictional integrity which led him by the nose, so to speak, into contexts and situations largely outside the domain of his personal experience. To be sure, the subjectivity of his earlier works 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 might suppose that 'Cross-Purposes' to be a philosophical-novel-turned-romance, and so, up to a point, it is. 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 Chapter 7, where Kelly's attitude to sexual promiscuity is concerned! However, that is still John O'Loughlin's favourite chapter in what is probably his most accomplished early novel. – A Centretruths Editorial

O avtorju

John O'Loughlin was born in Salthill, Galway City, the Republic of Ireland in 1952 of mixed Irish- and British-born parents of Irish descent. Following a parental split while still a child, he was taken to England by his mother and maternal grandmother (who had initially returned to Ireland after a lengthy absence with intent to stay) in the mid-50s and subsequently attended schools in Aldershot, Oakham, and, upon the death and repatriation of his Galway-born 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. Upon leaving Carshalton High School for Boys in 1970 with an assortment of CSEs (Certificate of Secondary Education) and GCEs (General Certificate of Education), including history and music, he moved the comparatively short distance up to London and went on to work at the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music in Bedford Square, where, after a lengthy period as a general clerk, he was promoted to clerical officer grade one with responsibility for booking examination venues throughout the UK. After a brief flirtation with further education at Redhill Technical College back in Surrey, where he had enrolled as a history student, he returned to his former job in the West End but retired from the ABRSM in 1976 due to a combination of factors, including ill-health, and proceeded to dedicate himself to a literary vocation which, despite a brief spell as a computer tutor at Hornsey YMCA in the late 1980s and early '90s, he has effectively continued with ever since. His novels include Changing Worlds (1976), Cross-Purposes (1979), Thwarted Ambitions (1980), Sublimated Relations (1981), False Pretences (1981) and Deceptive Motives (1982). Since the mid-80s Mr O'Loughlin has exclusively dedicated himself to philosophy, his true literary vocation, and has penned more than sixty titles of a philosophical nature, including Devil and God - The Omega Book (1985-6), Towards the Supernoumenon (1987), Elemental Spectra (1988-9), Philosophical Truth (1991-2), Maximum Truth (1993), and, more recently, The Centre of Truth (2009), and Musings of a Superfluous Man (2011).