Critics have compared him to other writers with a scientific background, such as Primo Levi, Robert Musil and Thomas Pynchon—a similar spirit of exactitude pervades some of Gadda's books.

Gadda's nickname is Il gran Lombardo, The Great Lombard: a reference to the famous lines 70-3 of Paradiso XVII, which predict the protection Dante would receive from Bartolomeo II della Scala of Verona during his exile from Florence: "Lo primo tuo refugio e 'l primo ostello / sarà la cortesia del gran Lombardo/ che 'n su la scala porta il santo uccello" ("Your first refuge and inn shall be the courtesy of the great Lombard, who bears on the ladder the sacred bird").

The paternal business ineptitude and the maternal obsession for keeping "face" and appearances turn up strongly in La cognizione del dolore.

He was taken prisoner with his squad during the battle of Caporetto in October 1917; his brother was killed in a plane—and this death features prominently in La cognizione del dolore.

[7] The country at that time was experiencing a booming economy, and Gadda used the experience for the fictional South American-cum-Brianza setting of La Cognizione del Dolore.

Certainly, his work demonstrates a strongly subversive attitude towards bourgeois values, expressed above all by a discordant use of language interspersed with dialect, academic and technical jargon and dirty talk.

[15] E il tragicomico lamento gaddiano, ora grottesco e ora infrenabilmente figurato o espressionisticoA breve uscirà "Eros e Priapo", a cura di Giorgio Pinotti che annuncia: «Si potrà leggere il trattato antimussoliniano nella sua forma originaria (1944–1946), ancora più oltraggiosa e vituperante: l'edizione Garzanti del 1967 è infatti frutto di una radicale censura, voluta da un Gadda ormai stanco e sempre più timoroso di rappresaglie».