Imagine if Texas seceded from the United States, led by a character eerily similar to former President George W. Bush, who does such ridiculous things as rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of Christco.
Hard to fathom? Maybe not.
That’s the premise of Charlie Green’s new novel, “The Shah of Texas,” which published Feb. 18 from Gold Wake Press. Green is a senior lecturer in the Department of Literatures in English in the College of Arts & Sciences.
“I’ve never had so much fun writing,” said Green of the comic satire, whose main character is a journalist uncovering a torture prison camp in Texas, which is at war with the rest of the country. Other characters include Dick Dick Dick Dick Dick, the Shah’s right-hand man; Bob Toose, the Secretary of Conflagrational Elucidations; and Maud Lynne, a pro-Shah newspaper columnist. “Think ‘Dr. Strangelove’ meets Mel Brooks meets ‘1984,’” Green said.
Green wrote the first 75 pages of the book in 2014, during the second Obama administration, when Bush’s public image was undergoing somewhat of a whitewash.
“People were writing about his paintings and about how he was this charming, folksy guy, but I was remembering how there were enormous protests against the Iraq War,” Green said. “The opposition to Bush was so fierce and so vocal [while he was president] that it was suddenly so strange to see him accepted as an OK figure.”
Green picked the book up again in 2017 after Trump’s first election. “It was a way for me to process some anger, but also to find humor in it because I find humor to be usefully balancing as a way to deal with difficult things,” he said.
The novel is set in 1989, 10 years after Texas has left the union. The Shah (whose real name isn’t revealed until the final pages of the book) continues to assert that Texas is winning the war with the U.S. and his constituents believe him.
Texas’ capital is Houston, which has two domes, the Astrodome and the Freedome. Readers will notice characters with similarities to Donald Rumsfeld and John Bolton and other members of the Bush administration. Another minor character is called N. Ron Hubbard.
“I want people to be laughing out loud on almost every page,” Green said. “It’s impossible not to find humor in the process of writing. And humor is a way people process trauma, a way they get through the day.”
Green’s first book, the poetry collection “Feral Ornamentals,” came out in 2021. His writing has appeared in Image, New England Review, and Missouri Review Online, among other venues. He teaches a variety of writing courses at Cornell.
Green will host a reading celebrating the book’s release on March 25 at 5 p.m. in the English Lounge (258 Goldwin Smith Hall), followed by a Q&A and a reception. He will also read at Buffalo Street Books in downtown Ithaca at 5 p.m. March 4.
