Divided into two parts, the first of which is autobiographical and the second biographical, this project strives to outline John O'Loughlin's development as a writer and the influences, both literary and philosophical, which shaped him over the years leading up to 1982. The first part, containing subjects ranging from sex and politics to health and writers, is slightly Nietzschean in its speculative approach to autobiography, whilst the second and more voluminous part, which deals with the estimable likes of John Cowper Powys, D.H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, Hermann Hesse, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Arthur Koestler, Lawrence Durrell, Henry Miller, and George Orwell, is intended to provide a biographical summary and fairly blunt appraisal of authors whose works were to inspire the author during his formative years as a writer. It is as though they were the beings whom he was eventually destined to become or, rather, that he became being - and hence a writer - through them. Finally there is an appendix comprised of a list of reading material which Mr O'Loughlin borrowed from Hornsey Library over a twelve-year period from 1977-89, which should intrigue those interested to discover how a self-taught, and even self-made, writer can fare with regard to the acquirement of a literary culture that owes little or nothing to school or college, whether in relation to leaving-cert exams or otherwise.