His work is characterized by periods of rebellion against the cultural establishment, to which he also belonged, and by a careful analysis of social habits during Italian economic miracle.

His father, Atide, was a cashier at the Banca Toscana, while his mother, Adele Guidi, was an elementary school teacher who always demanded excellence in studies from her son.

"[2] From his father, with whom he had a good relationship, he inherited a passion for soccer (Atide had been a goalkeeper in the first team of US Grosseto) and for the Italian unification movement, the Risorgimento.

[1] In November, he participated in the competition reserved for veterans to resume studies at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, and in February 1948, he graduated in Philosophy with a thesis on John Dewey.

During these same years, he was significantly influenced both by the works of Antonio Gramsci, and by the American culture he had explored in his studies, both academic and informal, of philosophy and literature.

[3] The investigation exposed the harsh living conditions of the workers and the poverty of their families, which he had personally witnessed, often visiting the mining village of Ribolla.

[3] For Bianciardi, this tragedy marked "the end of a period, of an enthusiasm, of a collective hope, and the beginning of a state of closure in which the entire country seemed destined to fall.

[1][3] Bianciardi contributed to the film magazine Cinema Nuovo, directed by Guido Aristarco, and worked as an editor for Feltrinelli until 1956, when he was dismissed "for poor performance".

In particular, he translated numerous American writers during his career: Jack London, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, and Henry Miller.

[3] He translated Saul Bellow's Henderson the Rain King, Steinbeck's The Winter of Our Discontent and Travels with Charley, London's John Barleycorn, J.P. Donleavy's The Ginger Man, and Faulkner's A Fable and The Mansion.

[7] Among the others, he also translated: Stephen Crane's Maggie and The Red Badge of Courage, Fred Hoyle's The Black Cloud, Osamu Dazai's The Setting Sun, Cyril Northcote Parkinson's Parkinson's Law, Mary Renault's The King Must Die, Brendan Behan's Borstal Boy, Irwin Shaw's Tip on a Dead Jockey, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World Revisited, Richard Brautigan's A Confederate General from Big Sur, Thomas Berger's Little Big Man and Killing Time.

Journalist Luigi Silori filmed a segment in which Bianciardi read the passage from the novel that described his morning outing for coffee and cigarettes, a foreigner in that city, while images of 1960s Milan rolled by.

The program inspired director Carlo Lizzani, who in 1964 directed Ugo Tognazzi in the film adaptation of the novel, for which Bianciardi also contributed to the screenplay and made a brief cameo appearance.

The promotional tour for La vita agra left him morally drained: the mechanical nature of the performance he had to reproduce for the audience each time ended up humiliating him, and Bianciardi retreated once again into his work as a translator.

[8] In 1969, he published his fifth and final novel, Aprire il fuoco ("Open Fire"), a complex alternate history novel that combines criticism of contemporary society against the backdrop of the Risorgimento riots.

In 1970, he returned to Milan, and later appeared in the comedy The Naked Cello, a film adaptation of his short story "Il complesso di Loth".