vonnegut hocus pocus

I'd like to save my words for Vonnegut for tomorrows presentation, but here are a few of general observations about his writing style:

1. V is a fan of well-placed, short and choppy sentences. Instead of writing long, suspenseful sentences, he write short, suspenseful ones. He's no Hemingway, of course, but I think Vonnegut is one of the few writers that writes short sentences well. Anyone can write a long sentence and fill it with suspense ("they are harmless. they are shmoos.") , but not everyone can write condensed suspense. V uses this tactic a lot in "The Blood of Dresden;" the shorter sentences attract the most attention while the longer sentences run less noticeably through the essay.

2. In all three of the these essays we chose, V chronically uses adjective-noun alliteration/consonance: feverish fighters, bunch of bastards (this is not an adj/n group, but rather a prep phrase but I'm going to count it here anyway), dull rumble of distant air raids, staunch subterranean fortress, splintered statuary and shattered trees, soft citizens, secondhand clothing salesman, painful place, automobile accident, etc, etc.

3. V is also fond of the chiasmus and listing patterns in his sentences. From "Cold Turkey:"
"Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
"A fire at one end, and a fool at the other."
From "Teaching the Unteachable:"
"[Writing well is something] God lets you do or declines to let you do."
An impressive list:
"That's the most delightful part of the game, of course: the pretense that everybody comes to a writers conference is a writer....a doctors' conference, where everybody gets to pretend to be a doctor; a lawyer's conference, where everybody gets to pretend to be a lawyer; and so on--and maybe even a Kennedy conference, where everybody pretends to be somehow associated with the Kennedys."

4. V generally writes in a running style. This also, I think, accounts for some of his shorter sentences--he writes in a very conversational manner, one true to real conversation (which is mostly brief and fragmented). He interrupts his stories with other side stories (like the bit about his son, Mark, the doctor), gets to his point somewhere down the third page of the essay, and finally finishes without luster (he just ends, you know).

uncanny

Freud's vocabulary in "The Uncanny" is of note: in the very first sentence he uses the word "impelled" instead of compelled. Hmm. Alliterates with the "i" in "investigates" but the "c" in "compelled" would have been, well, more compelling and sharp. Impel, however, means to urge or encourage while compel means to take action as a result of pressure or coercion; impel is very similar in meaning to compel but suggests even more strongly an inner drive to do something and often a greater urgency in the desire to act. Therefore, Freud's word choice here is very particular. He says "It is only rarely that a psycho-analyst feels impelled to investigate the subject of aesthetics, even when aesthetics is understood to mean not merely the theory of beauty but the theory of the qualities of feeling." Even in these rare instances, the pscyho-analyst does not have the strong inner drive or feel great urgency in investigating the subject of aesthetics.

At any rate, Freud's vocabulary throughout this essay is formal and dignified, yet his tone is personal. "The Uncanny" is written in a sort of running style. Freud seems to be thinking aloud--he knows what he's going for as a main point, but his sentences are loose and conversational. Notice this conversational, yet simultaneously reasonable and persuasive tone (almost a bit like Plato/Socrates in the Republic, yeah?):

Two courses are open to us at the outset. Either we can find out what meaning has come to be attached to the word 'uncanny' in the course of its history; or we can collect all those properties of persons, things, sense-impressions, experiences and situations which arouse in us the feeling of uncanniness, and then infer the unknown nature of the uncanny from what all these examples have in common. I will say at once that both courses lead to the same result: the uncanny is that class of the frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar. How this is possible, in what circumstances the familiar can become uncanny and frightening, I shall show in what follows. Let me also add that my investigation was actually begun by collecting a number of individual cases, and was only later confirmed by an examination of linguistic usage. In this discussion, however, I shall follow the reverse course.

The first sentence of this passage is rather short. It begins the rhythm of the paragraph: TWO courSES are Open to US at the OUTset. Kind of iambic, actually. The placing of the commas, semicolons, and colons in the middles of the following sentences are also a part of this rhythm; when read aloud, these pauses come naturally and occur at just the point in the sentence when an audience would want to quickly internalize what was just thrown at them. Ie: "I will say at once that both courses lead to the same result: (quarter beat pause) the uncanny is that class of the frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar." This pause sets up Freud's rhetorical punchline; its a anticipatory lag before the climax. He does this again in the following sentence: "How this is possible, (eighth beat pause) in what circumstances the familiar can become uncanny and frightening, (sixteenth beat) I shall show in what follows."

In addition to the persuasive tone Freud uses in this essay, I think that to an extent it also has an instructional tone. Take for example, his extensive definition and translations of the word "uncanny" in Latin, Greek, Spanish, etcetc and finally in German (which has many definitions).