Masters of Atlantis by Charles Portis
"Masters of Atlantis" is a novel by Charles Portis that humorously explores the rise and fall of a fictional cult known as Gnomonry. Set against the backdrop of the early 20th century, the story begins in 1917 with Lamar Jimmerson, an American soldier in France, who acquires a mysterious manuscript called the Codex Pappus. Believed to originate from the legendary lost city of Atlantis, this manuscript becomes the foundation for Jimmerson's attempts to establish a new religion. The narrative follows Jimmerson and his followers as they navigate the challenges of promoting Gnomonry, facing competition from other spiritual movements during the tumultuous 1920s and 1930s.
The novel is characterized by its gentle satire of the American fascination with gurus and pseudo-religions, highlighting the absurdity of seeking enlightenment through superficial teachings. As Gnomonry rises to prominence, it eventually declines, reflecting the fleeting nature of such movements. Portis's writing is noted for its genial and tolerant approach to human folly, drawing comparisons to literary figures like Geoffrey Chaucer. Overall, "Masters of Atlantis" provides a captivating commentary on the human condition and the often whimsical pursuits of spiritual understanding.
Masters of Atlantis by Charles Portis
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1985
Type of work: Novel
The Work
Masters of Atlantis is perhaps Portis’s most curious novel. It deals humorously with a fictional cult not unlike many that flowered and then wilted in twentieth century America. The story begins in 1917. Lamar Jimmerson—an American soldier and, like so many of Portis’s characters, an innocent—is in France with the American Expeditionary Force. For two hundred dollars, a gypsy sells Jimmerson a handwritten Greek manuscript. It is a copy of a book written in legendary Atlantis many thousands of years ago. When the destruction of the city was imminent, the book was sealed in an ivory casket and committed to the waves. This book is the Codex Pappus. After floating at sea for nine hundred years, it washed ashore in Egypt and was found by Hermes Trismegistus. After nine years of diligently studying the book, Hermes is able to read the text. Only after another nine years is he fully able to understand it, thus becoming the first modern Master of the Gnomon Society.
Jimmerson vainly searches on Malta for Pletho Pappus, the Master of Gnomonry, and the Gnomon Temple; however, he does find his first convert, Sidney Hen, a young Englishman. Jimmerson marries Hen’s crippled sister Fanny and returns to the United States. He has fifty copies of an English translation of the Codex printed and sets out to win more converts. Gnomonry languishes during the prosperous and high-spirited 1920’s (Jimmerson wonders if he will ever get the fifty copies off his hands), but it begins to flourish during the bleaker days of the 1930’s. On April 10, 1936, the Gnomon Temple is dedicated in Burnette, Indiana—characterized as Gary’s most fashionable suburb.
Through twenty-four chapters, the novel traces the rise and fall of Gnomonry. It chronicles the mystical careers of Jimmerson, Hen, and the other Masters of Atlantis. During the sixty years of the pseudo-religion’s existence, the Gnomon leaders must face the competition of Rosicrucians, alchemists, and charlatans and loonies of every stripe. The Masters must watch the decline of their sect from the glory days of the limestone temple in Indiana to the final housing of the sacred artifacts in a polystyrene mobile home in Texas. Portis has traced another odyssey—this time it is the journey of a harmlessly and charmingly insane idea rather than an individual.
Masters of Atlantis is certainly a satire on the tendency of many Americans to take up, briefly, the latest guru to claim a knowledge of the secrets of the universe. As the Codex Pappus is a jumble of non sequiturs (aphorisms, riddles, and puzzles, which combine to mean nothing or anything), the novel is also a satire on the popular books of psychic enlightenment that expound the appealing thesis that there is more to be learned from feelings and intuitions than from a rigorous study of the traditional arts and sciences. In fact, in the novel, the Codex Pappus spawns a hilarious brood of just such books. Masters of Atlantis is a gentle satire, however. Portis has Gnomonry come into being in the period of H. L. Mencken’s virulent attacks upon what he considered the invincible arrogance of southern fundamentalists and Sinclair Lewis’s exposé of fraudulent evangelists in Elmer Gantry (1927). There is no such sense of outrage in Portis’s novel.
It has been noted that Portis is sometimes compared to Mark Twain, but he is assuredly not like Twain in his equanimity, geniality, and tolerance. Even in his earliest books, Twain was often angered almost to the point of madness by the perfidy and stupidity of humankind. Portis is, in this respect, much closer to the great medieval poet Geoffrey Chaucer. He finds humanity infinitely fascinating, curious, and entertaining—and most entertaining of all when combining extravagance with wrongheadedness.
Sources for Further Study
Booklist. LXXXII, October 1, 1985, p. 192.
Kirkus Reviews. LIII, August 15, 1985, p. 815.
Library Journal. CX, October 15, 1985, p. 103.
The Nation. CCXLI, November 30, 1985, p. 593.
The New York Times Book Review. XC, October 27, 1985, p. 32.
The New Yorker. LXI, November 25, 1985, p. 163.
Newsweek. CVI, September 30, 1985, p. 73.
Publishers Weekly. CCXXVIII, August 23, 1985, p. 60.
Texas Monthly. XIII, December, 1985, p. 194.
Washington Post Book World. XV, October 27, 1985, p. 7.