Books, Boyd's "Panama and the Canal"

Panama and the Canal:
1903-2003 An Historical Novella
by W.Y. Boyd
Editora Sibauste, Panama 2004
121 pages, $7.50 in paperback

Well of course you can tear William Y. Boyd’s book apart if you want to subject it to rigorous historical analysis. Just like you can denounce John LeCarré’s “The Tailor of Panama” for its false portrayal of Panamanian realities. If you are one of the many people who get all your facts and ideas about the world from TV and movie action adventures, it may even in a way make sense to do so.

But you’re reading The Panama News, not watching Fox News, and one would hope that this indicates that you have enough sense to distinguish fiction from non-fiction and Ollie North from a reliable source.

Mr. Boyd is the president of the Boyd Steamship Corporation, the oldest Panamanian shipping agency, and author of a half-dozen books. He writes historical fiction, that is, stories that are made up but set within the framework of things that actually happened. In case you didn’t know, all Hollywood productions featuring historical events (other than documentaries) are works of historical fiction. (The Tailor of Panama isn’t one of those --- it’s a fictional satire, a completely made-up tale based upon exaggerated caricatures of characters and situations that may actually exist.)

So let me warn you kids who use The Panama News to research your school reports on Panama not to cite Boyd’s latest work as a source.

However, do read this little book to get the flavor of the circumstances under which Panama separated from Colombia and the Panama Canal was built. And even if your literary taste buds can’t distinguish fiction from non-fiction anyway, read it for the same reason you might read Robert Heinlein’s “Starship Troopers” --- just for the fun of it.

This novella is, down at its most important bottom line, fun to read. Boyd is a good writer, one of several adepts at crafting worthy English-language literature whom we find on the isthmus. This exemplar of his craft turns out to be a nice thing for a bookworm to have around on a rainy afternoon.

Panama and the Canal is the fictional story of Teddy Roosevelt’s nephew, which takes the reader through the Spanish-American War in Cuba, congressional machinations in Washington, international diplomatic intrigues, a modestly presented love story and, as the title suggests, the Panama Canal.

It’s one of the better recent works of fiction about Panama, far better than the Moonie newspapers’ fantasy about the Red Chinese running the Panama Canal, and much more about Panama than Le Carré’s celebrated (and, usually for the wrong reasons, much-denounced) spoof about a rogue spy. If you take Boyd’s book for what it is and you enjoy this genre of literature, then you shouldn’t be disappointed.

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Books: Boyd's "Panama and the Canal"

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“But that’s not what the historians say...”