Which Beat Generation writer developed cut-up writing with artist Brion Gysin?

William S. Burroughs developed cut-up writing with artist Brion Gysin. The technique involves cutting existing text into pieces and rearranging the fragments to create new combinations, disrupting ordinary narrative order and exposing unexpected associations.

Gysin is widely credited with introducing Burroughs to the practical method in the late 1950s. Burroughs then incorporated cut-ups into his writing experiments, particularly in works connected with the Nova trilogy, including The Soft Machine, The Ticket That Exploded, and Nova Express.

The method was not simply random typing. Burroughs treated rearrangement as a way to challenge habitual language patterns and conventional storytelling. He also connected it with ideas about control, repetition, and the political power of language.

Readers sometimes attribute the technique entirely to Burroughs because it became strongly identified with his books. Gysin’s role is essential, however: he was the artist and writer whose experiments helped bring the technique into Burroughs’s literary practice. Their collaboration is one of the clearest links between Beat writing and experimental visual art.