A novel's form is like the framework of a house

OK, so the idea of a "found manuscript" if rattling around in my head. I think of Nick in "The Great Gatsby", of the Narrator listening to Marlow tell the story in "Heart of Darkness", and that mysterious Benengali being cited as the originator of the adventures of "Don Quijote".

"Artist borrow, great artist steal," said Picasso. And, if you are going to steal, steal from the best. But, what was the "twist" I could give this form?

One of the things that bothered me about using a narrator/observer is that he or she is not privy to the thoughts of the characters. And, that we only have his or her interpretation of the action. He is the reliable or unreliable witness through whose eyes we "see" everything that happens and "listen" to all of the dialog and speech of the other characters.

The other thing that came to my mind was that great novels are concerned with their times: the undercurrent of "The Great Gatsby" is prohibition; the shadow hanging like a pall over "The Heart of Darkness" is the evils of colonialism; "Don Quijote", among other things, tells us that the literature of the 16th Century was waking up to the realities of life and thus debunking things such as chivalry and the romantic view of life.

"So," I said to myself, "what is the one paradigm changing fact of our modern life?" Well, that is easy: The Internet!

"What if," I thought, "the manuscript is not a manuscript but rather a bunch of printed out emails? What if these emails tell a tale? What if they can be constructed into insights of a man's life? AND, what if the narrator could then contact the mysterious writer of the emails? By email! And, what if he never saw him, but rather only "talked" to him by chat or email?"

This could be sort of like a Turing Machine! Is there a human really behind the machine? Am I talking to a man? A woman impersonating a man? A group of people? Anyone who has ever entered into a conversation with an anonymous entity on the Internet knows that there could be anything and anybody behind those lines in your chat.

Here was the twist to the old gag!

Tomorrow: starting the quest.