The firstborn child of Atide, a bank cashier, and Adele Guidi, Bianciardi was an avid reader even as a child and, in his spare time, studied the cello and foreign languages. Before turning eighteen, in 1940 he finished his education in classical studies at the Carducci-Ricasoli secondary school in Grosseto, then enrolled in the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy at the University of Pisa. Called to arms in January 1943, he only managed to return to his native city in the autumn of the following year. In 1945 he joined the Italian Action Party and in February 1948 graduated with a thesis on John Dewey. In an investigation he carried out together with his friend Carlo Cassola for "Avanti!" (published as a book in 1956 by Laterza), he probed the living conditions of miners in the Maremma region, starting from the firedamp explosion in one of the shafts at Ribolla which, in 1954, cost the lives of 43 workers. Meantime, in June 1954, he moved to Milan to take up the position of editor of the new publishing company, Feltrinelli; he remained there until 1957, when he was dismissed over his lack of flexibility in adapting to the job. To earn a living, he intensified his translating work, translating mostly American writers (Bellow, London, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Miller); he was also a prolific writer of articles on society and sport, as well as a TV and film critic, writing for both newspapers and magazines("L'Unità", "L'Europeo", "Il Giorno", il "Guerin Sportivo", "ABC", "Playmen"). His writing - now collected in "L'antimeridiano" (ExCogita Isbn Edizioni), edited by Luciana Bianciardi, Massimo Coppola and Alberto Piccinini - is seen at its very best in the trilogy composed of "Il lavoro culturale" (1957), "L'integrazione" (1960) and "It's a hard life (La vita agra)" (1962), according to Goffredo Fofi " three parts of one work: a novel, an autobiography, a pamphlet, or all three, focusing on Italy during that particular epoch". While "Il lavoro culturale" describes life in Grosseto between the end of the 1940s and the early Fifties with tones reminiscent of Fellini in "The Young and the Passionate (I vitelloni)" (1953), "L'integrazione" effectively moves from the rituals of small town life to that of the big city, and "It's a hard life (La vita agra)" - an important book in its day, and made into a film in 1964 by Carlo Lizzani - describes the boom years with biting malice, painting a portrait of a nation breathlessly pursuing wealth and a city - Milan - that is distressing "in its determination to alienate workers through mass production, no matter what the cost; to race ahead senselessly at breakneck speed". Of all his short stories, a special mention ought to go at least to "Il complesso di Loth" (1968), from which Pasquale Festa Campanile drew inspiration for one of his most accomplished films , "Secret fantasy (Il merlo maschio)" (1970).

Francesco Troiano