18+ The text contains profanity.

“Inherent Vice,” written in 2009, to the delight of those who could not overcome “Gravity’s Rainbow,” may seem simple and even cinematic, film announcements, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson confirm this. However, behind the apparent simplicity, as the translator of the novel M. Nemtsov rightly notes in his preface, lies “mystery and encyclopedicism.” Reading this, like any other novel by Pynchon, is work, but pleasant work, bringing legitimate joy from solving the codes encrypted by the author and popping up allusions here and there.

The personality of Thomas Pynchon is shrouded in mystery. His biography is always told “by contradiction”: he does not appear in public, does not tolerate publicity, does not meet with readers, does not give interviews... Even what seems to be known for certain about Pynchon is not necessarily true. “More has been written about Pynchon than he wrote. himself,” noted A.M. Zverev, one of the first to reveal the great American to the Russian reader. But although the most respected and venerable literary scholars wrote about Pynchon, no one wrote about him better than him, so the surest way to solve the “Pynchon mystery” is to read his books, although this task is Let's face it, it's not easy.