Why P shifted from Entropy to Gravity

[Dave Williams]

The critical industry has established that Adams was a key text, if not THE key text in P's formative years. They have also managed to describe P's development from V. or Entropy to GR or Gravity. 

Recent mention of Norman O. Brown's _Love's Body_ and _Life Agasinst Death_, prompted me to re-read Wolfey. 

What readers here may not know is that the key text in P's development from V. to GR is Henry Adams's _The Education_. In his important study of Norman O. Brown's influence on GR, Wolfey says that, while the theme is reversed (from V. to GR), the source is the same--Adams. 

see  Repression's Rainbow: The Presence of Norman O. Brown in Pynchon's Big Novel
Lawrence C. Wolfley
PMLA, Vol. 92, No. 5 (Oct., 1977), pp. 873-88