my ideal novel

Someone once told me about a piece of art, I think almost a sculpture. It consisted of a piece of fairly scuffed metal, above which had been hung a spotlight. The light was off. A switch was provided to turn it on at the viewer's pleasure. Before the light was turned on, the metal seemed scuffed and scratched every which way. Once it was on, the spotlight illuminated concentric arcs and tangents of scratches around itself. Once it was off, the brownian scuffs reappeared.

It's a very obvious metaphor, I know. But I'm a frivolous person.

My ideal novel would be online. It would consist of a black page, in the centre of which would be a grid, 5 by 5, of white dots. There would be a piece of code that would generate a link between each white dot and a random document from the server. The server would be filled with every text I had ever written. In less ascetic versions of the novel, it would also be filled with every text I had ever read.

The website would produce the randomly allocated text and at the bottom of the text would be a fresh, randomised 5 by 5 grid. There would be no 'about' section, no faq, no 'contact me' link.

The only question left is whether to provide paratexts; which gives rise naturally to an interrogation of what a paratext is. Is punctuation a paratext? I suppose it can be

It is traditional to be postmodern or definitional about your first post. This is why there is a gestural buffer -temporal and archival - before this. To take up that challenge - what paratexts should I provide here? You'll see for yourself.