An autobiographical novel of first-person tendency documenting several weeks in the life of a budding writer (Michael Savage) as he confronts the challenges of working alone for the first time and grappling with the problem,in a difficult domestic environment, of 'limits', both private and public, that forms the leitmotiv of this book, which was John O'Loughlin's first concerted attempt, dating from 1976 and suggesting the influence of Jean-Paul Sartre and even Hermann Hesse, at the so-called 'philosophical novel'.
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By John O'Loughlin
Oct 13, 2010
"FIXED LIMITS" If CHANGING WORLDS betrays the influence (through souped-up interior monologue) of James Joyce on Mr O'Loughlin's early fiction, then the chief inspiration behind this fictional journal was undoubtedly Jean-Paul Sartre or, rather, Sartre's first novel 'Nausea', which made such a profound impression on him ... that he simply felt the need to attempt something similar - albeit within a necessarily different milieu and social setting. This was in the autumn of 1976, and the result was an account of some three weeks in the life of the very same character, viz. Michael Savage, whom we first encountered as a disillusioned clerk in the above-mentioned novel, but whose existence here, as a budding writer, is nothing short of a spiritual rebirth! Now that Michael Savage has become or, at any rate, is in the process of becoming his intellectual self ... we are led into an even more subjective world than that of his previous incarnation, with further opportunities for... More > both autobiographical and philosophical speculation. In fact, FIXED LIMITS should be regarded as the sequel to CHANGING WORLDS, without prior reference to which much of its subject-matter and settings would be difficult to understand. For its author, this was the literary Black Hole which led into a new universe of fictional writings thereafter, beyond the reach of his early mentors.< Less
