The literary techniques of Deadeye Dick resemble those of most of Vonnegut's other novels. There is a sentimental, resigned, and eccentric first-person narrator who relates his tale with many chapters and many divisions within the chapters. There are also various "interrupters," that is, material that those who think that a novel should develop according to a definite pattern believe to be irrelevant.

In Deadeye Dick, Rudy's interpolated recipes break up the story. Sometimes he presents the story in the form of a play, because he wanted to be a playwright.

Vonnegut uses these techniques because he believes that the traditional novel is dead, so he sets out to write "antinoyels" in which conventional expectations about the novel are thwarted.

In Deadeye Dick, there is no real plot, but instead a collection of anecdotes; Vonnegut brings himself into the book by writing an introduction in which he explains its...