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Arts & Culture

The Cut-Up Technique in William S. Burroughs' Novels

Quick fact

Burroughs' cut-up technique was reportedly inspired by Brion Gysin's accidental discovery in 1959, when Gysin sliced through a stack of newspapers and found that the resulting overlapping texts created intriguing new meanings.

Why this is interesting

Imagine taking a page of a novel, physically cutting it into pieces, and then reassembling them in a random order. What if this chaos produced a story more honest than the original? This was the radical bet behind Burroughs' cut-up technique.