Charles Portis is one of a kind.
Best known for his 1968 novel True Grit — twice adapted for the screen — Portis was born in 1933 and lived to age 86, passing away five years ago (Feb. 17, 2020); yet he wrote only four other novels and is now all but unknown in the wide, wooly world of American letters.
I recently realized that even though I’ve read it four times, I somehow didn’t actually own True Grit — an utterly delightful comic Western praised by everyone from Walker Percy to Roald Dahl. With a quick internet search, your Webb book-lover was pleased to learn that Portis has finally gotten his due: In 2023, the prestigious Library of America issued a handsome one-volume collection of all five novels — along with much of the author’s journalism.
Getting my hot little hands on this edition, I instantly devoured Masters of Atlantis, Portis’s uproarious 1985 satire of cult religions. Virtually plotless, it rambles from Greece to England to Indiana to Canada, Mexico and finally Texas. The storyline consistently refuses to go where you expect — reveling in a madcap cast of crackpots, buffoons, drunks, louts, lunatics, losers and loopy egomaniacs. Over and over I kept saying to my wife, “I’ve never read a book like this!” — but then, I had already made that declaration some years ago when I likewise enjoyed Portis’s cult-fave Dog of the South (1979).
And I’m not alone. According to Library of America, in the mid-1980s workers at a Manhattan bookshop were so wild about Dog that as it was about to go out of print, they bought up the remaining 183 hardbacks and constructed “a window display composed solely of these copies.”
Except for the recent anniversary of his death, there’s nothing especially timely about Portis — though actor Michael Cera has optioned Atlantis for a possible movie. In that book, however, I did notice a pile of oddball terms; and this made sufficient excuse for Webb’s Weird Words to plug the author — along with his work.
Here are several offbeat terms from that offbeat book:
Afflatus (uh-FLAY-tuss, noun) – From Dictionary.com: “inspiration; an impelling mental force acting from within”; alternately, “divine communication of knowledge.” Coming from a Latin base that means “to blow” — found in such words as inflate and flatulence — this is an apt word for Masters of Atlantis, which focuses on one Lamar Jimmerson and his supposed access to ancient secrets; its connection to “blow” involves the idea of a deity breathing into humans — as in Genesis 1.
That’s likewise the origin of such words as “inspire” and “aspire,” with spir being another Latin base — this one meaning “breathe” (e.g., “respiration”).
Cheesehopper (CHEEZ-hop-ur, noun) – Used as a generic insult in Portis (something like “jerk,” “hayseed” or “clod”), this is actually the larva of a cheese fly — a tiny creature that can leap or dig using “clawlike mandibles” (Collins). Also called a “cheese skipper,” it can — according to Merriam-Webster — live in meats and cheeses, sometimes causing an internal maggot infestation otherwise known as “myiasis.”
Blech.
Estivate (ESS-tuh-vate, verb) – Go ahead — just try to guess what estivate means.
How about this: “To spend the summer, as at a specific place or in a certain activity” (Random House Collegiate). More specifically, it refers to the habit of some reptiles, snails, insects and small mammals to spend the hot season in a sort of summer hibernation.
Glossolalia (gloss-uh-LAY-lya, noun) – Another great word for a book about hidden knowledge, this usually refers to the gift of “speaking in tongues” as described in the New Testament (Pentecost, Acts 2) — and still practiced in many modern churches. The term can also refer more generally to “fabricated and non-meaningful speech, especially associated with a trance state or certain schizophrenic syndromes” (American Heritage).
It derives from the Greek gloss, meaning “tongue” — as in, for example, “glossary” and “epiglottis.”
Tarboosh (tar-BOOSH, noun) – A tasseled cap worn by Muslim men.
Even after all this, I’ve still got 18 more oddball terms from Masters of Atlantis; let’s save those for March and next week, in honor of our shortest month, we’ll cover clipped or shortened terms — like prom, deterge, whelm and suasion.
See you then!
