[agentultra]

See http://books.google.ca/books/about/Day.html?id=kKOefRuY954C

The book, "Day," by Kenneth Goldsmith was created by typing out, word for word, an issue of the New York Times. It's considered a book of poetry.

Typing out a novel word-for-word doesn't seem all that insane to me. And it likely isn't a useless exercise either: artists learning to draw and paint have often tried to reproduce the works of the masters in painstaking detail in order to try and internalize the techniques and effects used. I suspect the mechanical motions of typing out a piece of writing you admire will illicit much the same response in your brain as it likely shares the same mechanism of reinforcement.

[clebio]

Might also be worth noting that some of William Burroughs' writing (as he self-describes) were created by cutting a type-written page into quarters, rearranging various quarters, and then dealing with whatever came of that (i'm of course paraphrasing, from memory of reading his works years ago, so forgive any vagaries).