cutup is a text tool that uses Cut-up technique of Brion Gysin, and by William S. Burroughs, in Python.

I didn’t know what it really does until I read the description on Wikipedia:

The cut-up technique is an aleatory literary technique in which a text is cut up and rearranged to create a new text.

The concept can be traced to at least the Dadaists of the 1920s, but was popularized in the late 1950s and early 1960s by writer William S. Burroughs, and has since been used in a wide variety of contexts.

Its README has more explanation, I didn’t read either since I don’t really care to know how it cut the text to form the new content. The following is the cut-up version of The Temp Job:


% python cutup.py the-temp-job.txt 52 | head
house was packed. It was a and their families, the
but then my cousin asked me lovely evening at first,
way, is already a father of if I work, who, by the
answer to him only and two teenagers. Tried to
to keep it quiet, but he surely I did, I knew I had
else when they learned I was surprised as everyone
a week after school as a work part-time a few times
town. Mom was the only person cook at a diner of our
That was shortly before knew about the job before.
disapproval. He demanded me to quit dad’s verbal

Doesn’t read right at all, but that might just be the source text didn’t work well with the method, or my poor writing, whichever the worst is. The result of sample_page.txt looks more like normal text, but still strange:


% python cutup.py sample_page.txt 52 | head
Economic Behavior introduces the Theory of Games and
action into game and cut up method of random
that the worst has military strategy: assume
accordingly. If your strategy is at happened and act
by random factor your some point determined ...
advantage from knowing your opponent will gain no
predict the move. The cut strategy since he can not
advantage in processing up method could be used to
discoveries have been made scientific data. How many
produce accidents to order. by accident? We can not

cutup is written in Python 2 by Ross Goodwin without specified license.