>>63999754
if you meant why he's relevant here, he volunteered in wwi in the french army, crawled up to sergeant, got wounded with a paralysed arm and awarded for bravery
if you meant my opinion on him, i can barely get past the first few pages of any of his books but later on i can barely let it out of my hands and upon finishing i'm compelled to contemplate on my walks
to be taken with a grain of salt since it could just be my bitterness surfacing and i might just view things differrently later on in life though i doubt i'd ever somehow completely stop understanding where he's coming from and aiming at

it's like the literary version of a bittersweet drink, an aperol spritz if you ever had one, it feels made up, dragged on, pedantic and needlessly nihilistic at first but once you get used to it you're left perplexed to discover how complex and "real" the taste actually is and you're in fact enjoying it while already reminiscing you'll rarely find something quite as un-bullshitting as it
i also remember surprisingly watching picrel declare his admiration for journey to the end of the night (arguably the best after death on the installment plan) but also shocked at how abhorrent his french was before realizing that could just be the norm for canadians, an absolutely atrocious and bastardized subdialect
also if you're into these intraliterary references you should check out what junger had to say about him when they met in paris, absolute madlad lmao