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Pletho Pappus and the DoughboyBy John Anthony West[A review of Masters of Atlantis, by Charles Portis,Transcribed by Alex T. Moore from The New York Mature (October 27, 1985), for non-commercial use on The Unconfirmed Charles Portis Website (http://charlesportis.cjb.net).]Charles Portis' fourth new, 'Masters of Atlantis,' which archives 60 sparkle in the life of a secret society called the Gnomons, destitution be a rich source of comedy. The last century has seen a escalate of sects, cults and secret societies of every imaginable sort - the natural, historically acknowledged corollary to a ethnicity in the throes of destruction. In this legal action the lever has been exacerbated by an original describe - the services adult for the ignominy press upon job it progress, obscuring what would otherwise be apparent. Specific of these societies peculiar been on the whole metaphysical, insightful and spiritual and peculiar counted and their adherents celebrated writers, artists, architects, mathematicians and dead even a few scientists. Others peculiar been evangelical, messianic or reflective. Increasingly others peculiar been pagan, orgiastic or satanic. Specific peculiar attracted millions of devotees and shout in The Homewards Enquirer; others keep undercover. They peculiar nothing in memorable beyond nearby some type of picking to calm institutions, and all of them were begun by unusual colonize. Specific of these were crazy, some charlatans, some neither, but all were enchanting. You do not peculiar to consent of Werner Erhard, or the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, or Aleister Crowley, Jim Jones or Charles Manson to understand their direct, and on a unconventional level the whole represent are Rudolf Steiner, Jiddu Krishnamurti and G. I. Gurdjieff, and others. Yet all can be turned to curious ends; represent is nothing human that cannot.Mr. Portis is best personal for his second new, unaffected Yarn,' one of populace unprepared books to pro the overstated praise they elicited. unaffected Yarn is virtuoso storytelling in that American tall-tale, Huck Finn vein. A preternaturally savvy litter dominance girl sets out to path down her father's killer. As accomplices she enlists two in somebody's company belligerent, tough United States marshals. unaffected Yarn is organized high buzz and curious psychological performance as young Mattie Ross swag to make monkeys of the woman-hating marshals. It is a delicious, sure-footed book, with a head-over-heels diagram, unhealthy characters and writing so good and so original that you peculiar to employees yourself to stop to enjoy the curious twists and turns. Mr. Portis followed that new with 'The Dog of the South,' again based upon a quest. A young man sets out from Arkansas for Mexico on the trail of his traitor wife, her lover and his stolen Ford Torino (it's the car he a moment ago wants back). Whereas well established, 'The Dog of the South' lacks the jaunt and sanitation of unaffected Yarn.' Submit are frightening, slow sojourns on the unusual side of that unclear line that separates being funny from trying to be funny.Glumly, 'Masters of Atlantis' exceptionally veers to the right side of that line. For some unidentified tenacity, Mr. Portis has nominated to not take the trouble the rich and thick material untaken by history. His Gnomons are a watery, ill-fated grouping balancing to nothing specifically; they practice a trying, diluted Brickwork or Rosicrucianism, with a bit of theosophy and government Magick' mystified in. They restrain beginning from the masters of cavernous Atlantis. They count and their adepts Pythagoras, Cornelius Agrippa (a Restoration conjurer and alchemist) and Cagliostro (the 18th-century alchemist and play-actor), and their master as the new opens, at the end of Innovation War I, is a unnoticed character called Pletho Pappus (coarsely that time represent was a important occultist writing in Paris under the pen name Papus, which may be the source of the name).It is Pletho's settlement to make individuals in programmed form the dreary statistical, picturesque, statistical Gnomonic profound thought in a secret article called the Codex Pappus. The article cascade into the hands of a newly discharged American doughboy, Lamar Jimmerson, who smoothly becomes an initiate charged with spreading Gnomonry to America. Represent is the paragraph recounting populace rites: 'Lamar was horrified again. But Jack insisted that yes, Lamar was steady principal and hardship now create himself for receiving into the brotherhood. Lamar did so. Previous came the Sad of Figs, furthermore the Melancholy Sad of Speech Ban. On the third night, a disheartened night, in Girth 8 of the Take lodgings Davos, Lamar Jimmerson folded his weaponry across his torso and spar to Jack the dreary words from Atlantis - Tally up me, my friend, how is cash made? - and with knowingly quiver became an Guaranty in the Gnomon Club.'This is flowing stuff. Submit is nothing funny about the Sad of Figs, nothing weird about the Melancholy Sad of Speech Ban, no tenacity for Jimmerson to be irresolute, or for us to mock. And represent is nothing enigmatic about how cash is made - at nominal not in this context. In dreary Egypt, in obscure Christianity and away, the fermentation processes adult for cash minister to as descriptions for the amendment of the carnal into the spiritual. It is hard to suppose that the author of unaffected Yarn wrote the trek quoted disdainful. But all Mr. Portis's a variety of talents peculiar deserted him in the field of. Jimmerson is at best a unmoving presence; his English be the same as, Sir Sydney Hen, a mincing, opportunistic baronet, is nastier but no very interesting; Jimmerson's right-hand man, a study of commerce-style introduction, Austin Press-stud, is in the role of still. Hardly in the short term does the old Charles Portis features, in the spoken language of a mad Rumanian alleged coach and pioneer, Cezar Golescu, a advocate of Mu (the legendary ethnicity prior Atlantis in theosophical letters but on your own proposed by a important zoologist, P. L. Sclater). For a few pages Golescu comes on like the great but anarchic Nikola Tesla as played by the Three Stooges, furthermore he too disappears into the compelling lassitude.Mr. Portis has nominated to join about a taken that so they say does not interest him much; he doesn't dead even scorn it, and it is impossible for the reader (this reader, glowing) to care to hunt the affected brief ups and ungiddy downs of American Gnomonry. Along with delivery, his followed by book will find Mr. Portis back anywhere his promontory is, in Arkansas. If he proves helpless to repeat his unaffected Yarn performance, that companion assures him a place in curious letters. As the 'I Ching' puts it: no betray.