Masters of Atlantis

by Charles Portis

1917 France, Lamar Jimmerson finds a little book of Atlantean puzzles, Egyptian riddles, alchemical metaphors, and the Codex Pappus said to be the sacred Gnomonic text. He expands the noble brotherhood, survives scandalous schism, bids for governor of Indiana, and sees Gnomons gather in East Texas mobile home. This is an America of misfits and con men, oddballs and innocents.

Genres: Fiction, Humor, Novels, Literature, Comedy, American, Literary Fiction

248 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Charles McColl Portis was an American author best known for his novels Norwood (1966) and the classic Western True Grit (1968), both adapted as films. The latter also inspired a film sequel and a made-for-TV movie sequel. A newer film adaptation of True Grit was released in 2010.

Portis served in the Marine Corps during the Korean war and attended the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. He graduated with a degree in journalism in 1958.

His journalistic career included work at the Arkansas Gazette before he moved to New York to work for The New York Herald Tribune. After serving as the London bureau chief for the The New York Herald Tribune, he left journalism in 1964 and returned to Arkansas to write novels.

Reviews

[Sam Quixote · Rating 2 out of 5]

A couple of gullible fools are conned into believing a book of gibberish contains the mysteries of the universe. They establish a secret society based around the text and spend the rest of their lives being idiots.

Charles Portis’ Masters of Atlantis is a light comedy/satire on cults and secret societies that should never have been a full length novel given what little substance there is here. There’s no plot or story, just a revolving door of dipshits pretending to each other that they’re wise, trying their hands at bizarre get-rich-quick schemes like alchemy, and attempting to grow their cult across America by obtaining a measure of influence in the US government (which they of course fail at).

Watching the two deluded self-appointed “masters” convince themselves of their brilliance was amusing at first but, once you realise early on that it’s not going anywhere and is basically repeating itself with one moron after another believing they’re onto some major secret that doesn’t exist, it becomes oh so tiresome. One character towards the end sums up the reading experience well with “You get hardly any sense of movement or destination”, so I think Portis was at least aware of what he had with this turkey.

It’s not a successful comedy – I never laughed once because there’s nothing really funny here – nor does it say anything especially worthwhile about secret societies or the psychology behind its members. Portis does keep most of what the Gnomon society is about enshrouded in mystery for the reader throughout, which is cleverly appropriate given the subject matter, until we get a passage from their Bible towards the end which reveals that it’s full of unreadable meaningless drivel. But we didn’t really need to underline how stupid these people are given that there isn’t a single scene that shows them otherwise. I guess it was a joke. Ho… ho…

I got the strong impression that this would make a really good Wes Anderson or Coen Brothers movie (the Coens directed the latest version of Portis’ best known novel, True Grit – great movie but I wasn’t as impressed with the book. Guess I’m just not a Portis fan!) as it has the same kind of eccentric characters and absurd tone of movies like Rushmore and Burn After Reading. In their hands this material might well turn into gold but in Portis’, Masters of Atlantis remains a very dull and unremarkable novel about nothing.

[Krok Zero · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite Portis, I think. Such perfect command of tone: stone-face deadpan treatment of screwball-nutty material, like the prose equivalent of a Buster Keaton film. The nominal subject is cults and secret societies, but that's just Portis' entry point into the same kind of earnest eccentrics that all his novels are about. These kooks' behavior is presented totally matter-of-factly. This book is so hilarious. Was there a 20th century fiction writer funnier than Portis? I'm failing at writing an interesting review, so I'll just reproduce one of the many LOL-worthy passages. The context of this is that a hack writer has been hired to write the biography of protag Lammar Jimmerson, leader of the Gnomon Society, and Jimmerson (isn't that a hilarious name?) is none too happy with the liberties taken by the biographer:

‘Corpulent genius’ was fair enough. ‘Viselike grip’ was good. It was pleasing to see his oyster eyes described as ‘two live coals.’ The fellow had a touch, all right, but how had he come up with such things as ‘the absolute powers of a Sultan’ and ‘the sacred macaws of Tamputocco’ and ‘Peruvian metals unknown to science’ and ‘the Master awash in his oversize bathtub’ and ‘likes to work with young people’ and ‘a spray of spittle’? Why was he, Lamar Jimmerson, who never raised his voice, shown to be expressing opinions he had never held in such an exclamatory way that droplets of saliva flew from his lips?

Peruvian metals unknown to science.

Found a good review here http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/... from which I will also quote:

In his earlier books, specifically the first two, Portis's main characters are guided by what strikes me as a distinctly American brand of optimism and up-by-your-bootstraps tenacity. Masters of Atlantis, then, is about what happens when those same qualities are misguided, or manipulated by delusional hucksters, or both. At any rate, our story is under way, and it is told in a cool, unwavering deadpan that establishes vast chasms of irony as events become more preposterous, beginning with the arrival of Austin Popper, Mr. Jimmerson's on-again off-again spokesman and, without question, one of American literature's most hilarious creations.

Truth. Read this thing.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a treat! What a find! Portis' next-to-last of his 5 novels is simply hilarious from start to finish; sheer entertainment of the highest order - a wildly eccentric satire that never lets up and never lets down!

I'm not recalling how I have once again happened upon Portis' path. I know I read 'True Grit' when I was a teen, at the time of the film version that starred John Wayne. I may have liked the book (even if I wasn't the biggest Wayne fan) but that was the last I paid attention to Portis until now. (I've also seen the 2010 remake by the Coen Brothers; a satisfying flick, said to be both closer to and an improvement on the book.)

I actually thought of the Coens while reading this novel. It has their sensibility - and their wit, when they're at their best. But it dispelled me from the notion that Portis only wrote westerns. There's next-to-nothing in 'Masters...' that's of the western, but there's still a ton that's midwestern.

Its subject is the secret, pseudo-religious societies (or brotherhoods) that have more to do with pumping up the self rather than the soul. I've often wondered about the origins of such fraternal groups. But Portis knew it was ripe for parody.

A soldier in France in 1917, Lamar Jimmerson meets a mysterious man who introduces him to the Gnomon Society, a window to the secret 'wisdom' of Atlantis. The meeting is a fluke of fate and Lamar is a dupe of destiny; the mystery man is apparently a shyster who vanishes as quickly as he appeared. But he leaves Lamar with a booklet that resonates within; it speaks to Lamar's ineffable desire to believe in something / anything in order to get through life. Something silently PINGS inside Lamar - in that place inside people where things ping. He not only embraces his newfound 'truth' but he sets out philanthropically to give it to the world.

The problem rests where it does with most claptrap: Lamar doesn't have an easy time finding those as gullible as he was. Still, little by little, he finds them. The spread of Gnomonism catapults Portis' fertile imagination - and the way its gobbledygook does indeed find those who are 'worthy' is something to behold.

The reader may be reminded of other writers who have trucked in this kind of large-cast-of-characters eccentricity: i.e., Joseph Heller or John Irving. But, here, Portis also brandishes the kind of gently madcap wit reminiscent of Kurt Vonnegut, Joe Keenan and Patrick Dennis.

Marvelously constructed, 'Masters...' builds to the kind of satisfying conclusion that left me with a smile on my face. This is a work I will want to return to at some point.

[Tom Quinn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lamar Jimmerson accidentally starts a thriving secret society. Silliness ensues.

Lampooning the already wacky conspiracy literature genre doesn't take too much effort, since the whole subset of books is generally weird and wild to start with (see also the Illuminatus! trilogy, a personal favorite of mine).

3 stars out of 5. Mostly a fun and fast read but it grows tired pretty early on as the joke wears thin quick.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

About 70 pages into his fourth novel, Charles Portis seems to decide to turn up the heat on his simmering cauldron of fun and set the whole mess to bubbling and popping, cleanup be damned. "Masters of Atlantis" (4.5 stars) thereafter goes from a quite enjoyable, fairly amusing tale to just about as much fun as you can have with your clothes on.

The problems (albeit minor) the novel has in getting untracked are due mostly to the setup and history-building in this story of a secret (and often not secret at all) society dedicated to the arcane wisdom of the lost city of Atlantis. Once that's out of the way and the author spreads the focus from Gnomon Society leader Lamar Jimmerson to his minions and those odd souls forming splinter groups, it's Katy bar the door. Portis never really tells us about the Gnomon Society in any detail, but that's sort of the point. His characters believe deeply in this malarky and obfuscation, and that's enough. Clueless sincerity is a cornerstone of good humor.

I tend to be prickly about humorous novels achieving the right tone — that world can wobble off its axis pretty easily for me — but "Masters of Atlantis," with a gentle/rollicking twist of accessible weirdness, had me all the way.

The tale opens with World War I vet Jimmerson, in France, coming into possession of an arcane book, the Codex Pappus, a tome packed with gobbledygook and just maybe secret rites and knowledge of Atlantis and whatnot. Lamar hits the ground running, sharing his find with Sydney Hen, an Englishman who eventually is to go a little rogue with his own Temple. Lamar, meanwhile, now stateside, conical Poma hat ever-present, sees his Gnomon Society — headquartered in Burnette, Ind., but with Gnomon Pillars in Florida and Texas destined to survive as well — wax and wane as the 1920s turn into the '30s and well beyond. Lamar's right-hand man, Austin Popper, finds himself pursued by an FBI man sore as hell about being brusquely denied entry into the society and determined to nail Popper for avoiding service in WWI.

Later, Lamar makes an ill-fated bid for the governorship of Indiana, a trip to Rainbow Falls State Park definitely not his campaign's proudest moment, but one of the hilarious highlights for readers. I won't soon forget the image of the journey in a seldom-driven, bald-tired heap crawling along backing up traffic, belching white smoke, of Popper's nemesis on his trail again at the falls.

Things start to go to hell at the Burnette Temple. Around Lamar's increasingly seedy enclave, kids burn tires, and tramps gain access to upper rooms and won't leave, writing curses and poems on walls and leaving foul droppings. It's a neighborhood of bums and juvenile bullies where "on every block you can see a twelve-year-old boy holding a six-year-old boy in a headlock." The Temple's confines are deafening with encroaching highway construction and the vicinity rife with construction workers. When Lamar finally is persuaded to flee Indiana for the Texas Pillar, the fun meter hits the red: bums, boys, rats and roaches in an unholy convergence as our heroes skidaddle.

Texas isn't all roses for our boys (well, now old men) when a senate hearing probes this odd society. The exchanges between Popper and the senators is priceless.

After he's decided to unleash the hounds, so to speak, Portis doesn't necessarily care where things are going and doesn't seem to know how to jump off this coaster, but sandwiched between the start and the finish is sustained hilarity that, though sometimes wild, is perpetrated by characters aswim in such misguided earnestness that it never feels out of hand even when it probably is. The fact that the decades-long machinations of these deadpan Atlantis cultists doesn't really go anywhere is beside the point. I'm not sure I'll ever look at the world in quite the same way after "Masters of Atlantis."

[Lars Guthrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I rank ‘Masters of Atlantis’ fourth best in my listing of Charles Portis novels. It’s also his fourth chronologically. Number one, of course, is ‘True Grit,’ then ‘Norwood,’ then ‘Gringos,’ and last, ‘The Dog of the South.’ If you are a fan of the quirky, of common-man American culture in quaintly bizarre representation, you can’t go wrong with any of them.

In ‘Masters of Atlantis,’ Portis takes on an odd American institution that worms its way into all his work—the society with secret knowledge. Aliens are responsible for the advances of human history, or alchemists, or lost tribes. Anyway, certain unacknowledged prophets are aware of much more that the supposed experts. The truth. And they will let you in on what’s really happening, usually for a nominal fee and a special greeting for members only.

This kind of thing is still around, perhaps attaining its most virulent form in the brotherhood of Beck, but more genteel fraternal organizations do survive. The heyday of Shriners and Moose, Freemasons and Rosicrucians, though, seems to have passed. That’s a movement in our history that Charles Portis undoubtedly regrets, and he joyfully pays tribute to gnostic knowing with this comic homage.

It’s Portis’s most ambitious work in the number of major characters and historical context. The Gnomon society achieves intermittent fame and fortune not only through the initial efforts of Lamar Jimmerson, who returns to the States after World War I with the ‘Codex Papas’ and establishes a temple in Burnette, Indiana. There’s also Sidney Hen, fellow Master and leader of Gnomonism in England, then Canada, then Mexico, before finally being reunited with Jimmerson in the La Coma trailer park just outside of Brownsville, Texas.

And there are lower ranking figures who play significant roles in this story. One of the chief disciples of the Gnomon way as it approaches the end of the twentieth century is Maurice Babcock, who Portis describes in great, and marvelous detail: ‘not fat but with the soft look of a middle-aged bachelor who has a good job, money in the bank,’ who takes ‘pills and time-released capsules throughout the day,’ avoids ‘all foods prepared in aluminum cookware,’ and eats ‘a bowl of bran at bedtime to scour the pipes.’

It’s Babcock who gets to go on the inevitable Portis road trip, which has to be squeezed into the overstuffed story. Too bad, with this kind of observation: ‘The farmers of America, Babcock noticed, had stopped wearing straw hats, overalls and high-top shoes, and had gone over to the trucker’s uniform of baseball caps, tight jeans and cowboy boots, this outfit having the raffish air of the pool hall.’

Women cannot be privy to the myteries of the Cone of Fate, but Portis still manages to include some strong ones who play prominent parts. Indeed, ‘Masters of Atlantis’ suffers from an embarrassment of riches. A Portis story by nature meanders, but this one especially seems to wander, nevertheless keeping the reader chuckling as it does so. The extensive cast and the extended time frame are heavy burdens for Portis's intimate and colloquial style.

Would that Portis had centered the tale on the novel’s most impressive creation, Austin Popper, the quintessential glad-handler, an irrepressible promoter who is ‘sometimes facetious in a most unbecoming way,’ with ‘a vulgar inclination to make everything clear,’ and ‘a ready fund of information gleaned from newspapers and popular magazines.’ When momentum flags, you can depend on Austin Popper for a jump start.

When ‘the wisdom of Atlantis’ fails to gain attention, or funding, it’s Popper who offers the chance ‘to harness secret powers, tap hidden reserves, plug in to the Telluric Currents.’ An unforgettable character with a talking blue jay, he gives new meaning to the expression seize the moment. Popper throttles it.

Popper’s appearance before the Churton Committee of the Texas Senate, investigating ‘the recent infestation of the state by various cults, sects, communes, cells, covens, nature tribes and secret societies,’ is absolutely priceless. It is his personality that makes wading through the digressions, amusing as they are, of ‘Masters of Atlantis,’ worth it.

[Aaron Arnold · Rating 5 out of 5]

What makes an American novel? What makes a great novel? And what makes the Great American Novel? Masters of Atlantis isn't the Great American Novel, that elusive white whale of navel-gazing twentieth century writers, but it is great, and, to judge by the jacket copy on every single one of his books, extremely American. I agree with that sentiment, although I really can't say why. Obviously the fact that it's set in America makes it American in some way, but I think what those reviewers are trying to get at is that there's something about the way Portis presents the events in his book that a foreigner just couldn't replicate. Since plenty of non-natives from have written great books both set in and about the US, it's worth thinking about why Portis' works get grouped in with Mark Twain's and not Vladimir Nabokov's. I think it's mostly due to the brilliantly intimate way that Portis sketches his characters, who usually fall into two main archetypes: credulous yokels and self-confident hustlers.

Right from the very first page of this book, when WW1 soldier Lamar Jimmerson is convinced to pay $200 for the secret magisteria of the legendary Gnomon Society by a man who is variously called Nick from Turkey or Mike from Egypt or Jack from Syria or Robert from Malta, Portis sets up a great story with fascinating characters. The actual con that begins the story is over in a matter of pages, but the childlike faith with which Lamar pursues his dreams of being a Gnomon - whose Pythagorean rituals and lore, involving cones and spirals and triangles, are never described completely but alluded to constantly - sustains not only him but at one point thousands of others who flock to his banner. Early on he meets the Englishman Sydney Hen who convinces him to share in his secrets, and with the eventual arrival of diabolically inventive henchman Austin Popper the rest of the book unfolds in hilarious overlapping layers of bullshit, as the Society rises, splinters, and falls, and Popper strikes out on his own all over the map as a demented bibulous überfraud. This is on one level a classic satire of American society, which has always been made up of joiners and mystics and truth-seekers. There is no club or fraternal organization so ridiculous that it can't find a membership of willing dupes; partly this reflects our sheer size, and partly it also reflects the perennial tendency for such a materialistic society to find Higher Meaning in all sorts of things. I think there's a fairly clear continuum from the Great Awakenings through Sixties spiritualism and up to the Jesus Camps of the present day.

But what could have been a bitter polemic about American stupidity is a genial, affectionate comedy about lost souls, and though there's some scenes of decay and humiliation that darken the tone of the book, overall Portis knows that America needs its P. T. Barnums, and that a world without them would be much grayer. Popper's drunken wanderings comprise most of the action in the second part of the book, and if you don't laugh out loud when he tries to convince the War Department to use compressed air as a weapon, or when he tries to conjure gold up out of the earth with Golescu the Romanian's bagweed plants, or at any of the other scenes that rank right up there with Huck Finn's encounter with the Duke and the Dauphin, then you simply have no sense of humor whatsoever. Where Portis falls short of someone like Twain is that he doesn't really tackle serious issues like racism, but no book can be all things to all people so it wasn't a problem for me. I hope he stops not writing books, we could use more from him.

[Carla Remy · Rating 3 out of 5]

09/2010

Sadly shocked at how much I didn't love this. There's so much I should love. A, it's about a secret society and B, it's written all fabley and (to me) faux-Brit, with a strong Evelyn Waugh or even Edward Gorey feel. How could I not adore it? Well the plot had no build or suspense at all. It was as flat and dry as a board. So despite being amusing it was boring.

[Timothy Hallinan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Charles Portis is an American treasure, a teller of amazingly inventive shaggy dog stories, an absolute master of tone and character. His best known book, and the only one with a female protagonist, is "True Grit," but his funniest (and that's saying something) is "Masters of Atlantis."

If you don't like deadpan humor, skip this book. If you do, read it someplace where you can laugh loudly without getting killed; this is NOT a subway book. Portis writes with apparent deadly seriousness about the world's stupidest religion (which is saying something). The Gnomon Society finds answers to life's questions in an impenetrable farrago of geometry, Atlantis, Egyptian riddles, and, um, more geometry, all contained in a little book sold by a con man to an American G.I. in France during the first world war.

Over the years after the war, this former soldier, Lamar Jimmerson, abetted by an energetic, sociopathic con man named Austin Popper, take this badly constructed lean-to of spirituality and silliness to a very, very modest success with a handful of believers. In the end, though, they have to leave the Chicago building in which they've sheltered as they blew on this tiny flame and emerge blinking into the real world which, fortunately, proves to be Texas. This book contains a monologue by one of the people in the car on the long road to Texas that made me laugh my way into a sore throat.

Nothing much happens, but it happens sublimely. If you haven't read Portis before and you like this, get "Dog of the South," "Norwood," and "True Grit" ASAP. There's also one called "Gringos," but I'm saving it for later.

[Jim Leckband · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I was an undergraduate searching for belief systems (or for denunciations of belief systems - they are essentially the same thing) I came across a curious book in the Main Library. The book was called Lawsonomy and it was a wacky introduction to a early 20th century "philosophy" of Alfred Lawson. "Lawsonomy" was self-published and must have been donated to the library at some point. In any case, the all-encompassing claims, magical thinking and off-the-wall screwiness (the "zig-zag" theory of the universe for example) quickly cured me of any momentary lapse of falling into any belief system.

And that is one of the points of Masters of Atlantis - that any system of thought or beliefs usually just comes out of the noggin of some screwy bastard. The novel concentrates on Gnomony - but if you look closely, just about every kind of belief or organization is satirized by Portis. Religion and cults (of course), government, law, academics, business, get-rich-quick schemes, get-healthy-quick schemes, self-improvement, self-abasement - they all get their brief shot of sanitizing satirical sunlight in Portis' gentle comic novel. At the end, though, all that matters is human company and how we deal with each other - and the Masters of Atlantis finally get a moment of grace in their new giant, yellow mobile home with "cathedral roof and shingles of incorruptible polysterene"

[David Peterson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The novel doesn't have a lot of action, and it isn't laugh-out-loud funny. It's consistenly amusing the whole way, though, and Portis shows in a very entertaining way how absurd secret societies like this one are. At the same time, though, he's not unkind, and the ending is so sweet, absurd, tragic, and, at the same time, uplifting, that I didn't know exactly what to feel, but I felt it a lot. It's an ending I'll never forget, and certainly one of my favorites of all time.

Link to Full Review

[Sherrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm now 4/5 on the Portis-spree I've been on since December now - this Portis novel is definitely the funniest - something in his delivery of sly little jokes will certainly remind you of the Coen Brothers, Conan O'Brien AND the Simpsons all at once. I am pretty sure the guys who wrote the great Stonecutters Simpsons episode must have loved the heck out of this book about a Atlantean secret society called the Gnomons...that seems completely fradulent & imagined - and yet, completely real in terms of fraudulent, imagined socities.

Masters of Atlantis is full of shysters, scholars, scholarly-shysters and extremely talkative dreamers all drawn to one Lamar Jimmerson, the first person to translate the "Codux Pappus," the Gnomons' secret book of knowledge - which to everyone else, looks like a bewildering assortment of theorems and triangles. I didn't think you could get so much comedy mileage out of laughing at triangles, but here we are. I have one Portis book left to read and I am sad about it.

[Daniel Polansky]

A comic overview of the rise, fall, and sort of rise of a mid-20th century cult – the peculiar and dishonest characters it attracts. All the usual pleasures of a Portis story are here – the deft sense of irony, the brilliantly funny dialogue – but operating along a narrative structure which, while loose, is outside of the ‘first person southern idiot voice’ he does in a lot of his other books. Lots and lots of fun, not quite True Grit but still well worth your time.

[Max Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve now come to the end of the road with my good friend Portis, and what a fitting end this was! Tricksters, scammers, and fools galore. Escape velocity achieved!

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Why not Mr. Jimmerson for a change?"

Best campaign slogan ever. Can't believe he didn't win.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Charles Portis's Masters of Atlantis is a wryly funny look at an esoteric quasi-spiritual order called the Order of Gnomons supposedly founded by Pletho Pappus (who may or may not appear in the book) and Lamar Jimmerson. The book starts with Jimmerson and brings in several people influenced by him, notably Sydney Hen and Austin Popper. We see the Order over the decades as it becomes even less relevant and ratty around the edges. Especially when it moves to La Coma, Texas.

This is Portis's last novel, and it is just as funny as his four other novels, including Norwood, True Grit, Gringos, and The Dog of the South—all of which are worth reading.

[Bill Wallace · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a great book! I read this back when it was new and have intended to revisit it for years, since I've misspent countless hours since the 80s poring over authentic occult histories. Every one I've read has reminded me at least a little bit of Portis' satire on the flight from rationalism and the convoluted realm of truth seekers in the 20th Century Babylon of America. He nails perfectly the deadly serious world of tiny cults in fierce struggles over doctrine and captures the essence of believers, whether mainstream or at the tattered edge of the fringe.

Portis' straightfaced humor is at its best here, like a Sam Clemens channeler, with shots fired in many directions -- at believers, at authority of all kinds, at humanity in general. I think my favorite bit is the investigative hearing at the Texas Legislature, a body I've spent enough time arround to know it is even more surreal and absurd than Portis paints it.

At a deeper level, the book is a mostly gentle assault on a post-faith world that we're all stuck in together, with or without our pomas. Recommended to anyone with a sense of humor.

[Ben Samson · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the funniest books I’ve ever read. Like if Catch 22 was about whacky cults

[Stephen Durrant · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book deals with lunatics but does so with a straight face, precisely what so many of us are more-or-less required to do these days. Anyway, "Masters of Atlantis" describes grown men who imagine themselves in possession of profound secrets, which neither they nor anyone else can quite understand, and go about their small lives, wearing funny hats and exchanging knowing glances. Portis could have had any number of groups in mind--shriners, masons, etc., but it is really a novel about how extreme we small people can become in pursuit of some meaning that will help us imagine ourselves to be of greater significance than we really are. As a prominent politician might be inclined to say, "Sad." But kind of fun too, although the joke does wear thing after a hundred or so pages.

[Art Marroquin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of those books you don't want to end. Portis tells a story of some really ordinary people who think they have become privy to obscure secrets of the universe. What follows, as the author would say, are "displays of robust ignorance" that leave you chuckling, or laughing out loud. These guys (they're all men), for instance, have a plan to win WW II according to the principles of "gnomonism" that features "compressed air" and they mean to tell FDR about it. Why won't he listen? Put Voltaire in a laundromat and this is the kind of story he would tell.

[🐴 🍖]

😍😍😍😍💯💯💯💯🔥🔥🔥🔥🤑🤑🤑🤑💓💓💓💓💓😤😤😤😤🆒🆒🆒🆒😩🍆💦😩🍆💦😩🍆💦😩🍆💦😍😍😍😍💯💯💯💯🔥🔥🔥🔥🤑🤑🤑🤑💓💓💓💓💓😤😤😤😤🆒🆒🆒🆒😩🍆💦😩🍆💦😩🍆💦😩🍆💦😍😍😍😍💯💯💯💯🔥🔥🔥🔥🤑🤑🤑🤑💓💓💓💓💓😤😤😤😤🆒🆒🆒🆒😩🍆💦😩🍆💦😩🍆💦😩🍆💦😍😍😍😍💯💯💯💯🔥🔥🔥🔥🤑🤑🤑🤑💓💓💓💓💓😤😤😤😤🆒🆒🆒🆒😩🍆💦😩🍆💦😩🍆💦😩🍆💦😍😍😍😍💯💯💯💯🔥🔥🔥🔥🤑🤑🤑🤑💓💓💓💓💓😤😤😤😤🆒🆒🆒🆒😩🍆💦😩🍆💦😩🍆💦😩🍆💦

[Sully Tarnish · Rating 5 out of 5]

Charles Portis packs more wit into a single page than most authors can muster in a lifetime of work.

[Robert Morgan Fisher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Possibly the funniest novel ever written. Holy crap what a delight.

[Rob Gifford]

laconically funny, but also meandering -- it never really revs up into anything like a plot, just a series of loose comic interludes. in his anticlimax, though, Portis does manage to make that lack of direction feel profound, if not always *completely* satisfying: what is life if not a series of distractions you told yourself were very important?

[Larry Carr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Masters of Atlantis most definitely not for everyone, but nonetheless less a satirical masterpiece. Hilarious in it’s description of the absurd, with a commonplace recounting of the development of the history of Gnominism, it’s cones, spheres and triangles in the hands of a believer, and those that will follow.

Jimmerson having survived WWI remains in Europe, in search of a purpose. He for $200 is handed the medieval secrets to Gnomonism, and the first position of the Master of Atlantis. His goal becomes the protection and nurturing of the knowledge and secrets bestowed upon him. Sir Sidney Hen is his first cohort, and 2nd master. Hen founds the temple of London. Jimmerson marries Zen’s sister Fanny, and returns to Burnette Indiana and founds the first American temple. Jimmerson more interested in study and contemplation does little to grow the flock, and avoids publicity wherever possible. Enter Austin Popper, sales, conman and marketer supreme… “was Austin Popper the right person to direct such a program? He was willful, erratic. He was vain in his personal apperance. He was sometimes facetious in a most unbecoming way. In his writing he had a vulgar inclination to make everything clear. He had not yet learned to appreciate the beauties of allusion and Gnomonic obfuscation—that fog was there for a purpose. He couldn’t see that to grasp a delicate thing outright was often to crush it… Popper was authorized to proceed. An abridged Codex was prepared, and a new teaching syllabus. A new probationary degree called “Neophyte” was created.”

Popper. “He continued to court the press and he even had his picture taken with politicians. These were two of the Four P’s that all Gnomons were under orders to shun, the other two being the Pope and the police.” Growth takes $s, Popper aligns himself with Prof. Golescu, a Romanian alchemist, who is intrigued. “ He took pride in his Masonic degree, for he knew that his white linen apron was more ancient than the Golden Fleece or Roman Eagle, and more honorable than the Star or Garter, but so many of these brotherhoods had let him down with their grandiose claims and paltry secrets. Still, one could not give up the quest. Much ancient wisdom lay hidden, even from Golescu—the arts of Mu, the Alkahest formula, the elixir vitae—and it was his mission to search it out. Perhaps the Gnomons did know something.” Golescu having discovered the evasive European bagweed could absorb gold, Popper then convinces Golescu on using the abandoned gold mines of Colorado … “they would lease it as cheap grazing land and plant it in bagweed. Entire mountain ranges would be covered with a carpet of creeping bagweed. Nature would do most of their work and no stamping mills or monstrous smelters would be needed—only a leaf chopper, a few vats and some cheap chemicals.” Avoiding attention… “ As it turned out, no one in Hogandale cared. The fifty or so inhabitants were a dispirited lot of nesters and stragglers who had been beaten down by life. Brooding as they were, constantly, over their own humiliations, defeats, wrecked hopes, withered crops, thoughtless children and lost opportunities, they had no curiosity at all about the two strange men who had rented the old Taggert house at the bottom of the hill.”…Inevitably “ “No, I have not gone wrong. I have tried everything—zinc, cyanide, caustic soda, chlorine, distillation, sublimation, calcination, fulmination. Let us not forget high temperature incineration. Always the result is the same. This dirt, that dirt, always the same result. The production of gold is constant but small. It is not a function of the soil. Your idea was no good. Very stupid. Gold from the earth, you said, and you bring us out here to the headwaters of the Puerco River to get rich. I listen to a foolish American who have never taught science. Bagweed does not take up bits of gold from the earth, you stupid man.”

Nonetheless Popper’s dubious past, and word of his involvement with a mysterious sect, sets the law upon him… “FBI sitrep, or situation report, which ran: Popper, Austin. Age unknown. Origins obscure. Position and momentum uncertain. Disguise impenetrable. Tracks dim. Sightings nil. Early apprehension doubtful.” Popper “ would thread his way west on a series of local buses to San Francisco and there take refuge in Chinatown with an old Gnomon friend, James Wing. The plan was named for Poe’s tale “The Purloined Letter,” whose point Popper had misunderstood to be this, that the best hiding place is that place where a search has already been made. Poe was only one of many well-known authors with whom Popper professed familiarity, and of whose works he had read not a single world. He came by his information on such matters indirectly, through magazines, radio programs and hearsay.” Popper descends then into drunkenness and disappears from the scene.

Yet Jimmerson perseveres on his own… “The leap resolved itself into something called the Jimmerson Lag, which was to complement and shore up the Jimmerson Spiral. The Lag would account for all those troublesome loose ends and recalcitrant phenomena left unaddressed or evaded by the Spiral, or nearly all of them. That which was confused was now made clear, or fairly clear. Briefly put, the Jimmerson Lag postulated a certain amount of slack in the universe. The numerical value of that slippage or lag came to .6002, as best Mr. Jimmerson could reckon it, taking into account the ragged value of pi, the odd tilt of the earth, the lopsided nature of the Continental Triangle and many other such anomalies”

Years later, now sober, Popper returns to Jimmerson, his temple in deplorable condition and his flock dissipated. Popper not to be discouraged proposes a move… “ A new Temple in Texas, you see, with a library, a laboratory, an observatory, a computer room with humming machines, a carillon, a reflecting pool, a curving palisade of flagpoles to indicate our international character and some shady walkways on which our Adepts can stroll in pairs with their hands clasped behind them, while chatting of philosophical matters and kicking idly at coconut husks. Those are just a few of the things we came up with. The computer room was Mr. Moaler’s idea. I would never have thought of it and yet what is Gnomonism if not harmony of numbers?” Now relocated in Texas, hosted by Mr. Moaler in his private trailer park. Popper must give testimony on the nature of the Gnomon sect. “ I thought it would be obvious. We do it to protect our secret knowledge. We don’t know whose hands those books might fall into, Senator, and so we are obliged to put a lot of matter in there to weary and disgust the reader. The casual reader is put off at once. A page or two of that and the ordinary man is a limp rag. Even great scholars, men who are trained and well paid to read dull books, are soon beaten down by it. The wisdom is there but in order to recognize it and comprehend it you must have the key. That key is transmitted by word of mouth and only by word of mouth from one Gnomon to another in a closed circuit.” Zen makes his way from Mexico to Brownsville, and the masters Jimmerman and Zen are reunited, with Moaler in 3rd position. Yet excitement still… “He was brooding over Mr. Moaler’s interesting announcement. When would it come? Before dinner? After? During? With ding of spoon on glass? What could it be? Interesting to whom? Something to do with the Lag? A recent dream? A vision? A program of compulsory physical exercise? A day trip on a motor launch? He waved off the gown chatter. “Yes, but what news, Adele? What do you hear about this announcement or proclamation?”… “Ed told Whit that Mr. Moaler thinks there are too many people living here and that he’s going to turn some of us out.” “On Christmas day?” “Ed didn’t know when. He got it from Lázaro.” “And who was Lázaro’s source?” “I have Whit working on that now.” “Babcock, you think?” “I wouldn’t think so. He never knows anything.” “Popper?” “That would be my guess. Through Esteban to Lázaro to Ed.” “Or Popper directly to Lázaro to Ed.” “Or through Maceo to Lázaro.” “They confide?” “They confer. Over their pots.”

“He could feel the Telluric Currents. The pulsing made him a little dizzy. The surge and ebb. He saw what must be done. The flame was faint indeed and he had much work to do. He need no longer take account of the thoughtless multitude in the cities of men or of the three elderly gamesters at their table in their conical caps. He had often suppressed the thought but now he knew in his heart that he himself was a Master and that Maurice Babcock was to be Master of the New Cycle. Whit said, “What a wonderful Christmas!” Ed, who no longer missed the Red Room, said, “This is the best party I’ve ever been to!”

Christmas … a time to believe and celebrate 🎉!

[Bryce Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had never read Masters Of Atlantis. I have a habit of saving a work from the artists I truly love for when I need it. Blame Lost. Or more accurately, blame John Irving for having Lost rip him off.

But Portis's death seemed occasion to break the seal and I was rewarded with one of his funniest novels but also one of his subtly darkest. While absurdity has always been the life blood of Portis, there is a distinct vein of pessism running through Masters. If fate is not always kind in Portis's novels it often is (Norwood, Gringos) and even in the more indifferent universe of True Grit and Dog of The South the prison is obvious of its protagonists' own making.

Masters Of Atlantis on the other hand is built upon the foundation that looking for any kind of meaning in life is a sucker's game. That this message is delivered in a novel so pleasurable is testament to Portis's towering gift.

Still, though it was the novel of his I came to last, I have the feeling that it will be the one I revisit the least.

[Hal Brodsky · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm guessing this was extremely clever, timely satire when it was published, but reading it now leaves me feeling I'm missing the joke.
The story is a detailed history of a made up secret society that came into existence at the end of WWI. It's adherents are focused on Pythagoras and Atlantis. The story is only really funny when some of the characters go off on misguided adventures.

[Dustyloup · Rating 3 out of 5]

disappointed with the book. was promising but just wandered. still it was different so worthy of a read... 2.5 stars

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Charles Portis is an American master of short and punchy novels, usually about America's underbelly: think True Grit. I'm a Portis fan as well as a sucker for novels with occultist tendencies. So this should be a slasm-dunk. But just like Ty Cobb, Portis can occasionally throw a bad pitch, and while Masters of Atlantis (1985) isn't a bad pitch, it is not Portis's best. It's a matter of too much of a good thing.

Written as a satire of secret societies and occult philosophies, it has the Portian toungue-in-cheek wit and the usual suspects: a secret society with dubious origins, references to ancient arcane ideas like Hermeticism, reliance on unintelligible symbols to exclude the unpaying and unenlightened from the light shed by the society, and a pledge to the initiated of profound truths to be uncovered. In this case the philosophy is called Gnomonism. [Note: A gnomon is a geometrical form like the triangle used to cast the sun's shadow on a sun dial.]

The Origin of Gnomonism

Masters of Atlantis begins in 1917 while American Corporal Lamar Jimmerson is posted to France. There is a chance meeting between Lamar and a stranger named, variously, Nick the Albanian, or Mike the Greek, or Jack the Armenian, or Robert the Gypsy: the name changes as Lamar's attachment to the stranger's ideas increases.

At their first meeting "Robert" asks Lamar for cigarettes, offering in exchange a book of arcana titled the Codex Pappus. Robert says he is an Adept in the Gnomon Society of Malta and has been sent by the Society's Master, Pletho Pappus, to investigate the suitability of Americans for membership in the Society.

The Codex, a product of the Gnomon Society of Malta, is a Greek text containing the secret wisdom of Atlantis. It had floated in the Mediterranean for 900 years in a tightly-sealed casket until it came up on the coast of Egypt, where it was discovered by the pre-Christian-era occult philosopher Hermes Trismegistrus, author of the Corpus Hermeticum and father of Hermeticism. Trismegistrus was called "Thrice Great" because he understood the three great pillars of universal truth: alchemy, astrology, and theurgy. "Robert" tells Lamar that among the Gnomon Society's past masters were such diverse greats as the 5th century BC mathematician Pythagoras and the 15th century AD occultist Cornelius Agrippa, both of whom believed that numbers and symbols held magical powers.

Lamar is intrigued by the Codex. He memorizes its 88 pages of Greek text and symbols and "Robert" pronounces him ready; Lamar is inducted into the Society as an Initiate. The induction ceremony requires Lamar to repeat the society's secret recognition signal

Tell me, my friend, how is bread made?

Lamar pays Robert a $200 initiation fee and Robert promptly disappears. Lamar's attempts to contact Robert fail, as do his efforts to connect with either the Society or with Pletho Pappus in Malta. Surprisingly, nobody has heard of them.

So Lamar goes to Malta to delve more deeply. While in Malta trying to track down Pletho Pappus and Robert, Lamar meets an Engishman named Sydney Hen. Sydney takes an interest in both Lamar and Gnomonism. He invites Lamar to one of his intellectual soirees at his villa, where like-minded young people gather to discuss weighty matters. On returning to his room after the event Lamar finds it's been ransacked, and the next day he barely escapes injury in several "accidents." Lamar doesn't connect the dots.

Eventually Lamar promotes himself to an Adept and allows Sydney to read the Codex. The response is an excited

This is marvelous stuff! I can't make heads or tales of it.

Under Lamar's tutelage Sydney quickly becomes an Initiate, then an Adept. Then the two then promote each other to Masters.

So what we have is a thought of a secret society initiated by Robert's scheme to extract $200 from the dim-witted Lamar, but that mere thought flowers into a real Secret Society. Like the universe, Gnomonism is created by spontaneous combustion.

International Gnomonism

But now Gnomonism has two followers and two leaders, an unstable configuration. A decision is made to split Gnomonism into two geographical centers: Lamar will establish a Pillar of Gnomon in America while Sydney establishes a Pillar in Europe. Thus, one idea will serve two Masters!

Lamar chooses Gary, Indiana, to be the first Pillar of the Gnomon society of North America. Eventually he will be joined by two new Adepts who will establish Pillars in Chicago, Illinois and Valparaiso, Indiana. Meanwhile Sydney establishes his Pillar in London. The two Gnomonist centers operate independently.

The Business of Gnomonism

Lamar marries Fanny Hen and she joins him in Gary. Lamar iss opposed to taking any funds from the Society, so he and Fanny take jobs to make ends meet—Lamar as a clothing salesman, Fanny as a nurse. The Gnomon Society of North America, starved for members and funds, grows slowly and painfully. It has no Temple and operates out of the Jimmerson's home.

But in London, Sydney has a different management philosophy: he freely admits (paying) members who are attracted by the opportunity to become members of a secret society that will accept them, unlike the Freemasons or the Theosophists, The steady flood of initiation fees allows construction of a Gnomon Templein London, staffed by servants and generating a good income for the Master, that is, for Sir Sydney Hen—now a Baronet by virtue of his father's death.

The stock market collapse in 1929 leads to a flood of new initiates, undoubtedly a rush to networking by the unemployed. By 1931 America has 31 Pillars in six states; in 1936 the first Temple in America is completed in Gary. Lamar and Fanny occupied the Temple along with a number of servants.

Gnomonism had become big money in both England and America.

Trouble in Gnomonism

Every good idea has many children; every bad idea has many parents.

Lamar had always tended toward the cerebral, spending his time writing a number of "books" on Gnomonism: one buyer attacked Lamar when he was refused his dollar back after buying a book. As the enterprise grows, Lamar hires an editor named Huggins, who then hires a young assistant named Austin Popper—Popper will become the fly in the ointment as he sets out to change the business of Gnomonism in America.

Rising to become the power behind the throne, Popper simplifies the Codex to make it more accessible by reinterpreting its symbolism to make it seem more rational. Gradually Popper takes over Lamar's role as chief dispenser of the doctrine. Adherents to the new Gnomonism are attracted by Popper's message thatThrough Gnomonic thought and practices, they could become happy, and very likely rich, and not later but sooner. They could learn how to harness secret powers, tap hidden reserves, plug into the Telluric currents.But as time passes Popper is seen by the leadership as degrading Gnomonism by reducing it to a traveling show complete with silly pet tricks. The Council wants him to leave but Lamar, now dependent on Popper, hesitates.

Sydney Hen reappears in Canada, having moved there after being poisoned by his "paid companion" in London—a daily pinch of arsenic Hen publicly criticizes American Gnomonism in general, and Austin Popper in particular. He is heard to indicate that as "Grand Prior of World Gnomonry," a self-awarded title, he might annul the American charter. Lamar and Sidney go head to head in the press but with a war coming on, people lost interest in Gnomonism.

With the arrival of the war, membership drops sharply. At war's end in 1945 only three American Pillars remain: in Gary; in Naples, Florida; and in La Coma, Texas. The Austin Popper problem has resolved itself because he has fled—the FBI, led by an aggressive agent named Pharris White, is hunting him for wartime draft evasion. Fanny had left Lamar in an amicable separation. The Gary Temple is now vacant except for Lamar, who seems close to catatonia and, having paid little attention to business, has allowed the Temple to deteriorate.

The same decrepitude has fallen on the London Temple, Sydney Hen having decamped from Canada to Cuernavaca, Mexico. Public interest in occult thought is dead in the face of the rising popularity of rational thought, as evidenced by science and technology. Gnomonism dies out.

Gnomonism Redux

The story, already heavily freighted with viscissitudes, continues. Popper has been a dead drunk in Mexico for much of the 1950s. While there he was involved an alchemical scheme to make gold from a plant called bagweed: the venture failed after 1,100 pounds of bagweed yielded just .0062 ounces of gold.

Popper has sobered up but is still pursued by Agent White. He returns to Gary to see Lamar in the Temple. He's appalled by the current state of Gnomonism. He tells Lamar that in his drinking days he met a Texas Senator named Morehead Moaler, the son of the wealthy man of the same name who had led a successful Temple in La Coma, Texas. Popper had met the Senator's father and found him still enthusiastic about Gnomonism. The senior Moaler would like to revive his Temple but had assumed the entire movement was dead.

Popper tells Lamar that now is the time to begin again! Gnomonism still has a foothold, and it will be in a new Temple in La Coma.

No occultists were harmed in the production of this book.

[Trevor Seigler · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read this one before, but it's been years and I was thinking that "this is Charles Portis' masterpiece" when I did read it. Early on during this re-read, I was beginning to wonder if my memories of the book had been too fond. But as it turns out, yep, this is the best book that Charles Portis wrote, and that's high praise indeed.

"Masters of Atlantis" serves almost as a secret history of the United States, as it concerns the doings of the "Gnomon Society," a group of hare-brained thinkers who consider themselves the carriers of the secret knowledge gleaned from the lost civilization of Atlantis. A secret society that exists on the margins of everyday life, the Gnomons don't realize how little impact they have on the world around them, caught up in the petty rivalries and battles for supremacy within the organization itself. Lamar Jimmerson is the "master," but he's pretty easily taken in by con-man extraordinaire Austin Popper (among other aliases), who keeps cropping up to lead Lamar into one crazy scheme after another. Sydney Hen, Lamar's fellow "master" and brother-in-law, leads a rival faction, and the two have a long-standing rivalry for years, while the outside world takes no notice whatsoever. Think Scientology, but even stupider.

This book is a delight once you surrender to the outlandish premise that these rubes, swindlers, and deluded souls have anything approaching wisdom to impart to others. It's akin to "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater," by Kurt Vonnegut, in that it offers a fractured take on American life that is nonetheless grounded in some deep, disturbing truths. Think about the people in your life who've been easily swayed by conspiracy theories lately, and you'll get it. It's easy to see why the Gnomons appeal to the weak-minded and the on-the-make in equal turns: they offer the illusion of importance and power with minimum effort on the part of whoever's approaching it.

I don't think Charles Portis wrote a bad book; even the one I liked the least the first time I read it ("Gringos") turned out on a second read to be just about perfect. "True Grit" is the one he's known for, and deservedly so, but you can't go wrong with *any* of his books. But "Masters of Atlantis" is the deep cut entry in his bibliography that should be well-known. I know the Writer's Guild is on strike right now, but a mini- or limited-series adaptation of this book would be *amazing* in the right hands. Hell, Wes Anderson would have a field day with this if he based a film off of it. It's one of the best books I've ever read, and it should have a wider fan base if it doesn't already.