This novel begins when the main character steps onto the office escalator, returning from his lunch break to work, and ends when he steps off it, rising to the mezzanine of his office building. Over the course of a short trip, he and I solve the grandiose questions on which our entire Universe rests: why do shoelaces wear out at different rates? who came up with the spout on milk cartons? How should you put on socks in the morning? Why do straws float in Coca-Cola? What pleasures await us from punching a thick stack of papers with a stapler? and much more. The intellectual bestseller of the provocative American novelist Nicholson Baker “Beltage” is for the first time in Russian. A fresh look at footnotes to human culture.