Panama was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 1978. Chester Hunnicutt Pomeroy is a former rock musician and general-purpose Key West failure who spends the novel trying to win back Catherine, his ex-wife, through an escalating series of public spectacles, drug binges, and acts of self-destruction that he believes demonstrate the depth of his love but which actually demonstrate his inability to distinguish performance from feeling.
The novel is transparently drawn from McGuane’s own life during the mid-1970s — his notorious period of cocaine use, his affairs (including with Margot Kidder and Elizabeth Ashley), his dissolution of his first marriage, and his general reputation as Hollywood’s most self-destructive literary genius. Key West in the novel is Key West in reality: a community of writers, drug dealers, fishing guides, and washed-up musicians inhabiting the same bars and beds.
Panama divided critics sharply: some saw it as McGuane’s most honest book — a raw confession of addiction and emotional cruelty written without self-pity or justification. Others saw it as an incoherent mess produced by a writer too intoxicated to control his material. Both readings contain truth.
Collecting Panama
First edition (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1978): Boards with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine in jacket: $40–$100
- Signed first: $100–$200
Projected values (2026–2036): Moderate appreciation. The autobiographical element gives it permanent interest.
The Cocaine Novel
Written during McGuane’s notorious “Captain Berserko” period — when he was consuming heroic quantities of cocaine, cycling through marriages (including to actress Margot Kidder), and operating at maximum self-destructive velocity — Panama is the most transparently autobiographical of his early novels. Chester Pomeroy’s Key West unravelling mirrors McGuane’s own, and the novel’s manic energy reads like a dispatch from the frontlines of chemical excess.
Frequently Asked Questions
What was McGuane’s Hollywood period? In the 1970s, McGuane wrote screenplays for Rancho Deluxe (1975) and The Missouri Breaks (1976, starring Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson), and directed Ninety-Two in the Shade. The Hollywood money funded a lifestyle of cocaine, horses, and serial marriages that nearly destroyed his writing career.