Atd translation: balloonheaded clarity

[Joseph Tracy]

My idea of this passage is that Lew is describing a way of seeing particular to the area, the geography and the people who come there, more than something uniquely his own.  I just think that the use of balloonheaded is not the typical use of the term but inflected with the the reference to the chums. For a non-English reader the phrase seen from a ballon might get the reader much closer to the intentions of the author than a word implying dumb or stupid.  The emphasis is on the noun clarity rather than the adjective balloonheaded, which in the context of the novel is intended to have a double meaning. The adjective seems to me to be coloring the noun rather than arguing with it.
> On Apr 19, 2018, at 1:33 AM, Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> OK, so I was reading it wrong. The vision is actually the mine owners' and workers' vision, not Lew's. Is that correct? Then what is directed at at mine owners and workers exactly? 
> 
> On Wed, Apr 18, 2018 at 10:47 PM Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> I’m not so sure "seen from a ballon" can be rejected considering so much in the novel is filtered through the Chums balloon’s eye view. The Chums are like fiction looking at real history. Their view is both weirdly clear and also intoxicated by their peculiar “boy’s adventure" POV.  
> 
> Pynchon does not seem to me to be saying in this pasage that the point of view is  stupidly wrong but correct in a somewhat intoxicated and mildly distorted way, that distortion is equaled in the mine owners thinking of workers as expendable dwarves, seen a  small from the height of their power.
> > On Apr 18, 2018, at 2:28 PM, Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 
> > Oh yes, definitely.  I even considered the possibility of it meaning "seen
> > from a balloon", but that seems to be too far away from the common meaning.
> > 
> > Another possibility is being feverish, so your head feels like a balloon.
> > But I'm not quite sure how that works here.
> > 
> > And the dictionary definition of "stupid" , I can't make sense of that here
> > either.
> > 
> > 
> > On Wed, Apr 18, 2018 at 4:49 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 
> >> i think the balloon--headed is a nice Chums internal allusion, so to
> >> speak.
> >> 
>