A Magnanimous Offer

John O'Loughlin

Mar 2022 · Centretruths Digital Media

About this ebook

All six pieces included here were written in 1976 at a time when John O’Loughlin was turning from poetry to prose and felt the need to try his hand at fiction, or something approximating it, to see how he fared. Fortunately, he quickly abandoned the tendency towards plays characterizing the opening two pieces for both short and, subsequently, long prose, but he didn’t immediately abandon the alternating dialogue form of the ensuing two pieces, since he was to write several lengthy philosophical dialogues in the late ‘seventies and early ‘eighties. So even if this was a short-lived experiment, it was a harbinger of deeper and, so far as Mr. O’Loughlin is concerned, better things to come – certainly as regards the last two pieces which, though simplistic, are properly fictional. – A Centretruths editorial.

About the author

 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,WC1  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 at the ABRSM but resigned 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).