Fools and Tricksters

The fool and the con artist are the same literary invention run in opposite directions: both expose the world by refusing its rules. Six of them, from a murderous charmer on the Italian coast to a pair of Renaissance giants.

1. 1
   The Talented Mr. Ripley

   Patricia Highsmith · 1955

   Lvl 4290pp

   The con artist perfected: Tom Ripley lies, murders, and charms you into rooting for him. The trickster with the conscience removed.

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2. 2
   A Confederacy of Dunces

   John Kennedy Toole · 1980

   Lvl 4394pp

   Ignatius J. Reilly is the fool as force of nature: grandiose, unemployable, and somehow always right about everything wrong with the world.

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3. 3
   Dead Souls

   Nikolai Gogol · 1842

   Lvl 5464pp

   Gogol's Chichikov buys dead serfs on paper: the con as a guided tour of a whole society's rot, comedy that curdles as it goes.

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4. 4
   The Idiot

   Fyodor Dostoevsky · 1869

   Lvl 7656pp

   Dostoevsky runs the experiment in reverse: a genuinely good man loose in society, the holy fool as the most destructive trickster of all.

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5. 5
   Don Quixote

   Miguel de Cervantes · 1605

   Lvl 6940pp

   The patriarch of the whole line: a fool so committed to his delusion the world starts playing along. Everyone else on this path is his descendant.

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6. 6
   Gargantua and Pantagruel

   François Rabelais · 1534

   Lvl 81000pp

   The capstone in appetite and anarchy: Rabelais's giants make folly the size of the cosmos. Dip in; marching straight through is for fools.

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