Charles Portis on the Mediterranean Mind

An unfinished novel by the author of "True Grit" has been discovered.

The reputation of the late Charles Portis, author of True Grit and Norwood, has grown considerably over the years. He was always a popular writer, but as time goes by his renown seems to be slowly ascending from that of regional humorist to member in good standing of the national pantheon.

Harper’s has an excerpt from an uncompleted Portis novel called The Woman from Nowhere, which appears to be set in Veracruz, Mexico. An adventuress decides to marry an elderly widower when he claims to be one of the Five Proud Walkers.

But then no one could say with much confidence just where, at a given moment, a Proud Walker might be, or just who might be one. They were a cabal, these Five, a camarilla of nameless and faceless men who were believed to be the ultimate rulers of Mexico.

But just who were they? One theory had it that the Five were Jesuit priests, or perhaps defrocked, apostate Jesuits. Another theory held that they were Freemasons, possibly renegade Masons, members of a breakaway lodge, the smallest and most exalted lodge of Scottish Rite Freemasons in the world. Still another claimed they ruled from an underground room with high bronze doors, beneath the Chapultepec Hill in the very heart of Mexico City.

As for the apparent government of Mexico—or so the theory went—it was nothing more than an elaborate sham structure of sticks, cardboard, and painted canvas. It was a mere puppet show of elections, with dummy presidents, senators, and the like going through their scripted paces. It was all a colorful but empty pageant which served to entertain the people and keep the lawyers occupied with endless artificial disputes and to provide daily political fodder for the journalists, with their furrowed brows…

As I’ve long pointed out, the Mediterranean world, of which Mexico is a cultural outpost, enjoys conspiracy theories in part for their own aesthetic pleasures.

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