As I’ve said before, I first read True Grit after I learned that the Coen Brothers had begun production on a film adaptation of the book. I thought that if the Coen Brothers found the book interesting enough to adapt, it was worth a read. I loved the book. But when I finished it, I didn’t feel any need to seek out Charles Portis’s other endeavors. On the True Grit DVD (of course I have all the Coen Brothers’ films on DVD), there is a feature on Charles Portis and his other books. It was that feature that made me put Portis’s collection on my Christmas list that year. I’ve been reading through the books at a leisurely pace in chronological order (as is my wont). Masters of Atlantis, then, is Portis’s fourth novel, and the fourth one I’ve read.
Portis has always had elements of the absurd in his novels, but the absurdities have always existed at the fringes of the tale. Certainly, there is some absurd feature to all his protagonists, some obsession, or some set way of looking at the world, but the protagonists are a kind of hard center the reader holds on to as we travel through the absurdities of the world and the other characters the protagonist bounces off of. In Masters of Atlantis, Portis leans fully into the absurd at every level of his storytelling. The tale is full of ridiculous people wanting ridiculous things and behaving in ridiculous ways.
Published in 1985, Masters of Atlantis tells the story of the rise and fall of the Gnomon Society, a secret society (that is often anything but secret) claiming to hold the sacred truths of the world collected by and known to the Atlanteans. Lamar Jimmerson, a young American soldier in France at the end of the Great War, meets what is to the reader obviously a con man taking advantage of Jimmerson’s naivete and desire for something important and sacred. This encounter sends the believing Jimmerson to Italy where he believes he’ll meet up with other Gnomons to partake in their society. Instead of feeling had when he finds no trace of the society there, he decided he was being tested and must wait to be contacted. From there, he meets another man, Sydney Hen, an Englishman, who, when told about the society and the text Jimmerson had received from his first encounter, wants in. The two men take the study of that text—the Codex Pappus—seriously and create a full interpretation of the scribblings there. More men come to them and they essentially start up the Gnomon Society. The book follows the organization from 1917 to what must be the late ‘70s or early ‘80s. At their finest moment, Jimmerson can afford to live in a grand home in Burnette, Indiana that doubled as a Gnomon Temple. Jimmerson married Sydney Hen’s sister, Fanny, and had a son, Jerome. There were Gnomon branches (called Pillars) across the US, and the news was obsessed with them as both possible heroes and possible villains of the age. But the new grew tired of the Gnomons and people grew uninterested in secret societies. The Pillars dissolved. There was a schism in the order with Sydney Hen split off from Jimmerson in their interpretations of the Codex Pappus. Fanny found a career and moved away from Jimmerson, and Jerome, who never felt comfortable with his father, went with her. The Burnette temple fell into disarray and the elevated freeway that was built to connect Gary to Chicago went up around the temple itself, the peak of the tower showing through the divided roadway. The novel ends in Texas, where Jimmerson and Hen are brought together again in the compound of one Morehead Moaler, the last Master of the last standing Temple, which is really a doublewide trailer. The three old men are content with their lot, and there’s always the possibility of the Gnomons rising once more with the new cycle.
There are of course a host of characters who all find a place within the Gnomon Society, or in the case of a few permanently outside the Society in tension with it. The absurdities lie in the way these characters feel about and respond to the Society and its goings on. Jimmerson is a true believer, and he has little interest in how the Gnomons fair, though he does have enough of an ego to be played upon by other characters, primarily the mover and shaker, Austin Popper. He has decided the Codex Pappus is truth, and he spends his life interpreting and building upon that truth with books and papers. But his pursuit is silliness in terms of the book, and clearly no one reads his writings as we learn that one book was published without every other page missing, and no one notices for decades even though the book has been reprinted several times. In fact, it seems that everyone involved in the Society are equal believers even as they claim absurd revelations about their own past lives as leaders in the Society.
So what seems like a nest of conmen is never confirmed to be such. Portis never steps in and tells us what “the Truth” is even though we are left to infer much. The man in the opening who gives Jimmerson the Codex Pappus is only presented to us by what he says and does. What seems obviously a ruse is never laid out for us as a certainty. And Austin Popper is another case. We do know that some of his statements are lies, and his ambition is clear to us, but what does he really do with that ambition and those lies? He is content to sit in the dilapidated Red Room without luxury. And at the end of the novel, his grand scheme is to live in a doublewide trailer with three old men. There is obviously a core belief in the Society and its teachings. The absurdity comes in these characters having grand ambitions and cunning social interactions for what are the most meager ends.
However, this approach can make reading the book difficult, in that you don’t have a solid character to hold on to. Even if you’re interested in following the course of this Society, you aren’t in a position to root for anything—you are along for the ride. If you’re the kind of reader who is cool with being along for the ride (and in the hands of a skilled writer—which Portis certainly is—I am), then the journey through this absurd world is fun. But I can see a number of readers having a problem with the narrative, either dropping out some ways in or making it to the end only grudgingly. Judging by some of the reviews I’ve seen of the book, that seems right.
To me, the absurdities are not offputting because they are so perfectly human. The Gnomon Society is often seen in light of other secret societies and cults, but how is it really any different than major religions and their major texts. The texts are written by people, often cobbled together by other people, and then declared by a third group to hold all the answers and knowledge we need. The gentle mix of con artist and true believers is the exact combination necessary to fuel the expansion of such a religion. And to be clear, Portis is not mocking people who embrace religions, because those who are critical of them are just as absurd. I loved the scene of the Texas committee hearing in which Popper is grilled about Jimmerson and the Gnomons. The committee members are every bit as ridiculous if not moreso. The fact is, we are a ridiculous species and the more we insist on knowing the truth about anything the more ridiculous we are. If there is not grand meaning in the mysteries around us, then there are only absurdities in our insistence on their being grand meanings.
What I think makes the book enjoyable to read instead of painful, is the gentleness with which Portis approaches his subject. I could see the argument that Portis is almost loving toward his creations, laying their absurdities bare and open to critique, but doing so without malice. If it’s not love, then there is at least a feeling of camaraderie, an acknowledgment that as ridiculous as these people are, they are not especially ridiculous, no more than the rest of us.
