MASTERS OF ATLANTIS | read 2023-09

Portis's flat, journalistic delivery masks a thoroughgoing farce of American culture, and attentive readers steadily come to know more of what's going on than the characters. While Portis uses 3P omniscient throughout, he doesn't employ authorial asides to make this clear, and one result is a distinctive narrative tone. Masters of Atlantis is more serious than deadpan comedy and more sympathetic toward its characters than mockery or ridicule.

Essentially Gnomonism --the mystery cult driving the plot-- is rooted in a classic con, but Jimmerson, the believer behind its rise in America, doesn't realise this himself. It's important to note a few things before dismissing Portis's tale as simply a comedy of simpletons duped by nonsense and conned into buying a bill of goods.

● Portis never addresses whether the mysteries are real or not; the closest he gets is in describing the reactions of other characters and currents in American society. The reader is no wiser than the characters on this specific point.

● Jimmerson is described as unfailingly sincere in his efforts at sharing the mysteries with Americans; if Gnomonism isn't "real", Jimmerson at worst is unwitting perpetrator, never shyster. This is not to say the story doesn't treat of shysters nor that the Gnomon Society avoids this part of the American character, merely that the story is not solely or even principally about that.

● The character representing establishment opposition to Gnomonism generally, and Jimmerson and Hen personally, is that of Pharris White, a lawyer, former adept, and current FBI agent every bit as absurd, comical, and inept as any Gnomon. Portis presents us with no America more competent or less absurd than that of the Gnomons.

This story is not about the mysteries purportedly at the heart of Gnomonism, then. It's about people who believe in the mysteries, the people they attempt to win over, others who seek out Gnomons to persuade of other things "more important", and finally the reactions of everyone else these various characters encounter. The bewildering plot and intertwined interests form the North American companion to Foucault's Pendulum, that very Continental novel of secret societies and conspiracies (enticingly published just a few years after Portis's novel).

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To read:
NORWOOD
TRUE GRIT
DOG OF THE SOUTH
GRINGOS
COLLECTED STORIES
CIVIL RIGHTS REPORTING
ESSAYS
MEMOIR ( )