The Catch Trap

Title:	The Catch Trap
Creator:	Marion Zimmer Bradley
Date(s):	1979
Medium:	print
Fandom:
Language:	English, other translations
External Links:	a cover of "The Catch Trap"
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The Catch Trap is a book by Marion Zimmer Bradley.

It is supposedly one of the inspirations behind The Professionals AU Harlequin Airs.

The title of the book was utilized by Marion Zimmer Bradley long before this book's publication as part of her contribution to Day*Star in the mid-1960s. See Catch Trap.

Fanworks Based on "The Catch Trap"

Bradley died September 25, 1999. Her franchise has been continued by Deborah J. Ross and Elisabeth Waters.

Due to draconian views held by Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Works Trust, some fans are reluctant to create fanworks based on "The Catch Trap."

In February 2012, Elisabeth Waters, one of Bradley's trust owners, wrote a comment on a fan's "Catch Trap" fic and a few days later, a representative from the OTW responded:

[Elisabeth Waters]:

Unless this is intended as satire, it is an unauthorized derivative work. The right to PREPARE a derivative work, let alone post it on the Internet, is reserved to the copyright holder, which would be the Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Works Trust. They have been known to file suit for this behavior, so if I were you, I'd take this down--at least until you can rewrite it do that it has nothing to do with The Catch Trap.

Rebecca Tushnet: Just a note to say that this comment is being addressed through other channels. -Rebecca Tushnet, OTW Legal Committee.

Later comments on this thread:

[Sheogorath]: In case you are unaware of the fact, the whole basis of this archive is that fanfiction is legal as transformative works. Or to put it more simply, I respectfully refer you to the response given in Arkell v. Pressdram.

[Tammi]: "They have been known to" she says ... like she doesn't even know who "they" are. LOL You do know we can all see your name, right Lisa?

Fans are also likely to avoid, or have very mixed feelings, creating fanworks about this book, and other content by Bradley due to her behavior and actions related to the 2014 reveal that she had sexually and abused her own, as well as other, children.

From a fan discussion in 2017 regarding a "Catch Trap" fic called "Candlewish":

[guest]: I started reading the Darkover novels as a teen, and I special ordered Catchtrap when it first came out. I loved it for its rich circus detail. Now after all the revelations about MZB, I can never read it or think of her as I once did - but still, the Santellis, particularly Papa Tony will always have a warm place in my heart.

[vanillafluffy, the fic's author]: I didn't hear about the MZB backstory until long after Candlewish was posted. It makes me angry, because it takes one of my favorite books and turns it inside out: what was sensitive suddenly becomes sinister. Still, the writing and characterizations really are outstanding. *sigh* I'm glad you enjoyed Candlewish, thanks for commenting.

• The Catch Trap fan fiction on AO3

The Same-Sex Element

Many fans remember this book as one of their introductions to same sex fiction.

In 1980, this book was sold to Darkover fans via an ad in Darkover Newsletter #22:

[The Catch Trap is] the mainstream novel by MZB about three generations of am Italian,circus family, has been reissued in paperback with a new cover and a blurb) especially aimed at the "gay" market but despite the very strong "gay" emphasis, it is not a'"gay novel" per se, but a long and complex novel of many family relationships. It would be equally easy to call it a feminist novel because of the way in which it highlights the disastrous results to women of the 1940s caused by the attitudes of men in such families.

In 1982, the book was sold to fans via Friends of Darkover in an ad that did not mention specific sexual content:

WE HAVE HAD a lot of inquiries about Marion Zimmer Bradley's book THE CATCH TRAP, a mainstream, non-s-f novel about a three-generation family of circus people, acrobats of the flying trapeze. For those people who would have liked to buy the book, but understandably didn't want to pay $10.95 for a copy, we have bought up a large quantity of these books at a discount and are offering them for sale for $5 a copy, sent postage paid --- Book Rate, jiffy bag mailer. Autographed if desired, no charge. Add $1.50 extra for First Class mailing, or insurance.

In 1986, Bradley described it as:

my overtly gay novel.

Some 1994 Comments by Bradley

Another idea [of mine] has a long and complex history. Once, when we were living in Texas, I took my young son David, then nine or ten, to a little truck- and trailer-circus in Texas. While there, I talked to one of the trapeze flyers, whom I discovered I had actually known in childhood and met at my grandmother's. I followed him around through a couple of shows, reawakening the memory of actually having seen the great flyer Antionette Concello, in childhood, and having seen what must have been one of the last performances of the even greater Alfredo Codona.

After the show moved on, left alone in Texas, I started doing desultory research for a circus novel, saw the Burt Lancaster film Trapeze, and one called The Flying Fontaines, and hunted down and read the book on which the Lancaster film was supposedly based -- like butter to a butterfly -- namely, not much. I figured I could write a better novel of the circus, and started one. I originally thought of it as a kid's book; the first chapter of the novel but after I'd finished it, or thought I had, the two main characters continued to obsess me and it finally became a monster novel about a thousand pages long which I showed to Scott Meredith. He said, truthfully, that unless I wanted to do a massive rewrite there was no market for it, except in the quasi-pornographic gay novels of the day, so I put it in my bottom drawer and it's just dumb luck that it didn t get thrown out in one of our moves. We had so much junk! I give Walter the credit - once I actually threw it; into the fireplace and he physically dragged it out. Maybe he had a psychic flash. I didn't, but I I kept it hanging around until just by accident Judy-Lynn Del Ray read it and published it, in the changed climate of the late seventies. Twenty years after I wrote it.

Reviews

• review by Erastes (2010)

Fan Comments

1979

At first glance RI infuriated me as a rip-off of NTM, by the way (I still think the conjunction of the twin moons a bit much, and wonder if she consulted you about the use of same). But her complete cultural background was what I always have hoped for with NTM, and what you could give us. As a matter of fact, your rationale about female dominance makes much more sociologically valid sense than hers, since her aggressive intelligent men just would not have waited anything like 70 years to revolt, no matter their spiritual respect for the sex who could hear the gods speak. [Also], if any of the K/S persuasion out there have not discovered MZB's newest The Catch Trap (non-sf, about a circus family) you are missing a real treat. The entire book deals extensively, realistically and beautifully with a subject she only touches on glancingly in the Darkovers.

After the decidedly disappointing mindless and bloody THE SURVIVORS, it was strictly an act of loving support for a Darkover fan to buy MZB's new non-sf $10.95 book THE CATCH TRAP while knowing nothing about it. Seldom have I been so enthralled and pleased by a book—let me highly recommend it not only to Darkover fen but to the K*S contingent of Star Trek, This is a beautifully told story of two young men who work as circus flyers ("We move as if we had only one heartbeat") as they perform intricate split-second maneuvers in tandem. And who form a partnership not only of their careers, but of their very souls and bodies. Also recently discovered and enjoyed Marlon's feminist RUINS OF ISIS—what else has this wonderful writer got in her trunk?

1994

The last song on the tape is Orinoco Flow, by our own Gayle. I loved the vid (a beautiful song set with all of the images of why we love video science fiction, (in fact, it reminded me of a discussion in the Catch Trap (by Marion Zimmer Bradley, a must read for a slash fan about why people love trapeze acts, that it is all about our desire to fly.) Beautiful vid.

1995

I went into TCT with high hopes [for slashiness] but they fell flatter than Karl Wallenda.

... I could give stylistic reasons for disliking the book: portentous lines like "It was to last all his life" and "It was the only promise to each other they never broke" in place of decent foreshadowing; the romance cliche, used to excess here, of Tommy doing things "unconsciously" and "automatically" as a sign that he and Mario are Destined To Be Together; the complete lack of a plot—nothing happens, for 800 pages NOTHING happens, it's an 800 page PWP without even the saving grace of hot sex (I like PWPs — character interaction is plot enough, for about 10 pages but then I start to expect something like, oh, I don't know, a story line maybe).

But the real reasons I didn't like it are that 1) Tommy and Mario bored me to tears and 2) in spite of the soul mate theme and the (too) late angst, it didn't feel slashy to me. Regarding 1) I just can't get interested in a 14 year old American boy. Just does not push any hot buttons at all. I don't think even a British accent would've helped this time. I just can't see any of my preferred characters as a teenage American boy. IN a teenage American boy, possibly, but not AS one. Mario had more potential but it was wasted and by the time he finally starts to gel satisfyingly broody and self-destructive I was already hoping he'd just fall off the trapeze (and land on Tommy) so the book would end.

Regarding 2) After reading Swordspoint and really liking it, I decided TCT didn't feel slashy to me because I couldn't superimpose any of the slash couples onto Mario and Tommy. Swordspoint felt more like fan fic to me, the relationship between Richard and Alec was familiar and I could cast a slash pair I like into their roles easily. [...]

For all I know, T&M may be a very realistically depicted gay couple of the 40s and 50s. I don't care; that doesn't satisfy my slash craving. The freedom the other authors have to create obstacles to strew along the path of true love makes a more pleasurable read for me. I guess this gets back to the plot-lite nature of TCT. Societal pressure and personal guilt are fine, but wicked, sadistic villains who kidnap one the lovers and threaten unspeakable acts (or even better, perform unspeakable acts) are ever so much more fun. Of course, you could have that set in a book in a real time and a real place, too. So setting isn't crucial, but it helps.

A dark, brooding character who wears black also helps...but isn't enough because Mario fits the description. The way the lovers interact is more important than whether one or both physically resemble a slash pair I like (at much younger ages than their TV characters). But 1 can't quite articulate what the distinctive quality is that makes one relationship feel like slash and not another. The pro slash books invoke some of the same romance novel conventions that a lot of fan fic does -- one partner is aristocratic and one isn't (or is pretending not to be); one is bigger than the other; one is less experienced; one is older. TCT uses some of these, too, but still doesn't quite work the same way on an emotional level.

Angst is definitely a factor in slashincss for me; TCTs best moments were near the end when there are a few brief scenes that let the reader really wallow in Mario's guilt and self-destructive urges.

Don't agree about Catchtrap [sic], though you're right about some of the cliche devices in the writing. I liked It anyway, perhaps because Mario is a haunted dark figure who flies through the air and has a very traditional Italian family. I'd call it well characterized gay fiction, and enjoy it in much the same way I usually like slash. Is it necessary, to make story characters interesting to you as slash or slashy, that you be able to find similarity to a particular visual media couple, or (as you may have meant) that the written characters must have the right slashy "feel" for you before you'd bother to visualize them at all, which you would do in familiar forms?

2000

Another really old one, probably long out of print but worth grabbing if you ever see it second-hand. Vaguely contemporary-historical rather than her usual fantasy, with a quiet warmth and the bittersweetness of reality. It's the kind of story where a few short, sweet moments amidst the characters' struggles to just stay on their feet in life are more wonderful than anything else you could hope for. The quality of the writing and editing isn't as good as her usual, but I loved it just the same.