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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Burroughs Cut Up Theory

Tits win

17:45 / 27.09.01

Could anyone tell me where to read about William Burroughs theory about cut up. Either in books or on-line. Either by him or someone else is cool.
Thanks in advance.

tracypanzer

17:50 / 27.09.01

Got this by typing 'william burroughs cut up' in google: http://reitzes.www4.50megs.com/cutup.html

Looks fairly comprehensive.

YNH

05:34 / 28.09.01

For Books: Minutes to Go

rizla mission

08:17 / 28.09.01

a blessing from god

I've got piles and piles of absolutely wicked cut-ups, but I'll refrain from posting them, as they're generally much more fun to the person who created them than they are to the casual reader.

I'll email them to any weirdo who actually enjoys this kinda free flowing nonsense though.

Tits win

17:42 / 28.09.01

Minutes To Go, who's that by then?
Thanks Teela Tomnoddy.

w1rebaby

09:29 / 02.10.01

I'm surprised there's no auto-generating cut-up page on the web. Maybe that's a good project... okay, I'm copyrighting the idea now...

The Return Of Rothkoid

09:29 / 02.10.01

This one seems to generate stuff on the fly. It's an applet that comes with some text already, though you can load some in.

Tits win

17:20 / 04.10.01

Thanks everybody

but I was kinda looking for the theories Burroughs had for cut-up rather than cut-up machines.

The Return Of Rothkoid

19:03 / 04.10.01

Well, try following Aaron's link. There's information on theories there. I think Burroughs stole it off Tzara, anyway. Rizla posted a book title, too...

There's not that much you need to read about the theory, though, really - not if you're looking at doing it yourself...

YNH

02:01 / 05.10.01

quote:Originally posted by 08:
Minutes To Go, who's that by then?
Thanks Teela Tomnoddy.

Brion Gysin... you know, the guy who, er, pushed WSB into cut-ups. You'll likely have to find it at a library, as it's out of print and quite expensive. Another book by WSB and BG called The Third Mind is excellent. The Job and The Adding Machine have comments by WSB about possibilities and later feelings about cut-ups, respectively. In a nutshell, try them out, learn from them, and move on. Sorry about the lazy post earlier, I'm kinda busy and there was a thread in Conversation about this a couple months ago.

gentleman loser

16:52 / 05.10.01

A tad off the original topic, but I found a cut up software engine here.

I haven't had the chance to try it out yet, but it looks a hell of a lot easier than tedious hat drawn cut-ups.

I saw some David Bowie documentary a few weeks ago that said he uses cut-up extensively to generate lyrics, which I thought was interesting.

Tits win

17:40 / 06.10.01

Thanks you lovely bastard, I love you all.

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