The Female Fool
by Jenny Hatchadorian

It was 2003, I’d just finished my freshman year at Tulane, and I was thinking a lot about A Confederacy of Dunces, the picaresque novel that was basically required reading in New Orleans. The novel has flaws, but I drank up Ignatius Reilly’s grand, ungovernable, garrulous manner. He was insensitive but not cruel, his irascibility was shrouded in originality and humor that revealed the artifice of society. Not entirely a burnout, he was a fool or clown who navigated the world without following the rules – to me, he oozed possibility and invention.