Sam Spade as stoner

As epigraph, Pynchon quotes triumphalist graffiti from the buoyant Paris youth uprising of 1968: “Under the paving stones, the beach!’’ The illusion, that is, that the stones hurled at the lines of French police would lead into a time of splendor and freedom.

The hopes are recalled, reconstituted, and chastened in “Inherent Vice’’ and so are the ’70s shadows that overtook them. As for the beach, in California, it is restricted in some places, turned tawdry in others; though with beauty enough along large stretches, surfboarding still, and lots of bicycling.