Abstract
There are certain things that simply cannot be described unless you have experienced them (things like winning a marathon, climbing Mt. Adams and flying). Jane Schwartz says as much in her wonderful novel, Caught, a book tailor-made for bird lovers.
The title, Caught, exemplifies the philosophy of the book's major characters - a group of Brooklyn Flight flyers during the late 1950s. These men, and they are all men, live and breathe, the sport of pigeon flying. They spend hours each day training a "kit" of birds to perform unerringly as one. Those that separate from the flock are "caught" by another flyer's kit. They are then his birds. Seldom. if ever, are they returned. It happens to be the rule of the game.
When Schwartz introduces the heroine of her book, a young lady by the name of Louise, the reader discovers the intensity and indescribable thrill of pigeon flying.
Louise dares to be different. While her older brother and his friends forsake their casual interest in birding for the traumas and delights of puberty, "Louie" quickly attaches herself to Casey, a seasoned rooftop flyer. Defying the all-male tradition of the game, she becomes his "chaser" or apprentice. Casey immediately teaches her, and the reader, the secret of the sport: "To be good, you have to lose'.'
Everyrirne Louise loses, the reader gains. For Schwartz' knowledge of pigeons, and her wonderful feel for their importance to pigeon people triumphs again and again. The terminology is correct. The bond between apprentice and tutor is touching. But the hallmark of this book is the way Schwartz captures the passion of the pigeon-flying sport. To those who have only raised the fancy breeds, it is a particularly enlightening manuscript. For those who opt for exotic cagebirds, it opens the mysterious door into the world of rooftops, where intense dramas are performed against a backdrop of limitless sky.
And, to everyone who has pondered their own miraculous induction into the avian hobby, it provides an answer. Louise states it simply: "Only a year before I would have thought the sky was empty. ... Now I searched the skies for it, knowing that any minute the microscopic figure of a bird would appear, winging its way out of the distance, either lost or heading for home'.'
The miracle of bird flight was never so poignantly portrayed, reminding us that "even when the bird walks, we see that it has wings.:"
Caught, by Jane Schwartz, was published in 1985 by Available Press (a division of Ballantine Books), New York. It sells for S5.95 (paperback). "quote by Antoine-Marin Lemierre, French author
A Note About Flights
The Domestic Flight is a high-flying pigeon which was traditionally flown from city rooftop lofts (most notably in New York City). The sport, which was once immensely popular, declined substa nt iall y with the urban growth experienced over the past thirty to forty years.•