["Balloon"] is a four act comedy in prose. The jacket says "it is the first play to be based on modern philosophical ideas. The action takes place in a 'Spenglerian' world in which life has become externalized and where the idea of height and distance is dominant." Perhaps that is the matter with it. Or perhaps that is the matter with me. I have only the haziest notion of what a "Spenglerian" world is, and the ideas of height and distance become dominant in my life only when I climb a mountain….
Caspar, the hero of "Balloon," invites people to take a peep at the moon through his telescope outside the Hotel Daedalus, the glittering skyscraper pile where the sophisticated of the world gather…. Along comes the architect of the hotel, world weary, and pays Caspar a large sum for his telescope, so off goes Caspar into the hotel…. He tries to make a balloon ascent from the roof with a famous movie actress, but she calls off the stunt when she learns there are to be no papers printed the next day. However, when he encounters a dancer whom he had loved as a wandering gypsy girl and she wants him to take her up in the balloon he funks and proposes a ferry ride. She goes up instead with the architect, who has got tired of contemplating the moon, and poor Caspar stands broken-hearted on the roof, persuaded that one of his kind does not belong in the Hotel Daedalus. But there is a happy ending. The girl drops by a parachute back to the roof, hitting it exactly. She couldn't hear what the architect said to her in the higher altitude, so she and Caspar take the elevator down, presumably to hit the gypsy trail together.
