Charles Portis’s quintessential comic masterpiece centers on Lamar Jimmerson, leader of the Gnomon Society, the international fraternal order dedicated to preserving the arcane wisdom of the lost city of Atlantis. Stationed in France in 1917, Jimmerson comes across a little book crammed with

Atlantean puzzles, Egyptian riddles, and extended alchemical metaphors. It’s the Codex Pappus—the sacred Gnomon text. Soon he is basking in its lore, convinced that his mission on Earth is to extend the ranks of this noble brotherhood.

Taking us through the publication of Jimmerson’s own Gnomic texts, to the schism that rocks the Gnomic community, to Jimmerson’s disastrous bid to become the governor of Indiana, and finally to the fateful gathering of the Gnomons in a

mobile-home park in East Texas, Masters of Atlantis is a cockeyed journey into an America of misfits, con men, and innocents.