From Superfluous Man to Superman

John O'Loughlin

apr 2022. · Centretruths Digital Media

O ovoj e-knjizi

All the pieces in this third collection of revised and reformatted weblogs originally hosted by Wordpress.com date from 2011. With this collection the author has been careful to ensure that the original chronology of weblogs has been replicated, so that one can proceed through the material with a growing sense of continuity and even thematic enhancement, two crucial advantages of book publication over what may often appear to be the disjunctive if not chronologically unrelated nature of blogging. Even so, he has usually tended to approach weblogs from a standpoint centred in his metaphysically-orientated philosophy of Social Transcendentalism and intended to achieve some kind of thematic continuity in spite of the formal limitations of blogging, and we believe that, here as in previous such compilations, he has largely succeeded in producing a body of work that not only adds up, but also seems quite interrelated and even cohesive, partly because few of his weblogs were ever written in situ but usually derive from prior notes which he was then able to copy-in and upgrade or 'beef up', preparatory to downloading them to a local file which would subsequently serve as the basis, following revision, for a new eBook and/or physical book. Hopefully, this one is as good as if not better than each of the previous such books, including its immediate precursor, 'Musings of a Superfluous Man', and should serve to show, moreover, that a man who sees himself as being superfluous in and/or to one kind of society may well prove of superhuman and, more particularly, supermasculine significance to himself which the type of society he inhabits would be unable to comprehend, much less appreciate! – A Centretruths Editorial

O autoru

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 resigned 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).