Jubilation, T.C. Boyle

While it’s pretty obvious that Boyle is making a point about Disney World (“Contash World” is what he calls it), this is a story about an Everyman discovering that starting over doesn’t mean leaving himself behind (actually, I’m certain—after reading this again for the first time in a decade–that this is what inspired the central theme in my Disney Parks-set collection Skeletons in the Swimmin’ Hole).

What truly makes this piece worth the read is the hilarious first-person narrative of the protagonist, who brings central Florida and the quirky characters he meets to life in such vivid rendering it’s hard to believe you’re reading fiction (spoiler alert: it’s also like he predicted a recent alligator attack approximately a dozen years before it happened…it’s a little bit creepy). You can find “Jubilation” in Boyle’s collection Tooth and Claw: https://amzn.com/0143037439