Caleb Whitefoord, a neighbor and best friend of Benjamin Franklin, was doing a form of cut-up in the late eighteenth century:

It was Whitefoord’s genius to notice that when you took a broadsheet newspaper of tightly set columns, and started reading across the paper’s columns—rather than reading down to the column’s next line—you could achieve what he described as “coupled persons and things most heterogeneous, things so opposite in the nature and qualities, that no man alive would ever have thought of joining them together.” Whitefoord called this cross-reading, and he was so amused by it that he would publish sheets of his favorite specimens and hand them out to friends in Fleet Street coffeehouses:

Dr. Salamander will, by her Majesty’s command,

undertake a voyage round—

The head-dress of the present month.

Wanted to take care of an elderly gentlewoman—

An active young man just come from the country.

Yesterday the new Lord Mayor was sworn in,

and afterwards toss’d and gored several Persons.

Removed to Marylebone, for the benefit of the air—

The City and Liberties of Westminster.

Notice is hereby given—

And no notice taken.

Burroughs did exactly that and cut-ups and fold-ins mimic the process.

1868-70

Isidore Ducasse/Lautréamont

Maldoror

Included lines lifted directly from previous texts, especially descriptions of nature. As Burroughs said: if, say, Konrad had described a treeline perfectly, why not just lift the text and use it as the background for the action in your text, much like collage?

I think this is Ben Franklin:

“It was Whitefoord’s genius to notice that when you took a broadsheet newspaper of tightly set columns, and started reading across the paper’s columns—rather than reading down to the column’s next line—you could achieve what he described as “coupled persons and things most heterogeneous, things so opposite in the nature and qualities, that no man alive would ever have thought of joining them together.”

Whitefoord called this cross-reading, and he was so amused by it that he would publish sheets of his favorite specimens and hand them out to friends in Fleet Street coffeehouses:

Dr. Salamander will, by her Majesty’s command,
undertake a voyage round—
The head-dress of the present month.

Wanted to take care of an elderly gentlewoman—
An active young man just come from the country.

Yesterday the new Lord Mayor was sworn in,
and afterwards toss’d and gored several Persons.

Removed to Marylebone, for the benefit of the air—
The City and Liberties of Westminster.

Notice is hereby given—
And no notice taken.

There is an excellent article here. Any idea if Burroughs ever mentioned Whitefoord?

https://intercapillaryspace.blogspot.com/2006/05/caleb-whitefoord-cross-reading.html