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).