THE SWEET FLYPAPER OF LIFE: BOOK REVIEW
The Sweet Flypaper of Life is a beautiful book filled with character portraits of an entire family and their life in Harlem. Written by Langston Hughes and illustrated with photographs by the legendary photographer Roy DeCarava, the book is a gentle trip through both the simplicities and complexities of life in Harlem in the early 50s. Originally published in 1955 in a relatively limited print, the book was reissued in 2018 opening up this incredible document to a wider audience. The Sweet Flypaper of Life makes the world feel just a little bit smaller and forces you to take a closer look at what matters in your own life.
By 1955, both Hughes and DeCarava were at the height of their prowess. DeCarava had just been awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship, making him the first black photographer to receive the award, and Hughes had already built up an extensive body of work throughout the Harlem Renaissance. The idea for this book originated when DeCarava brought Hughes 300-400 photographs he had taken of daily life on the streets in Harlem, and Hughes made it his mission to ensure that they were published. But the photos were far more than published, this project turned into an extensive collaboration between two men that gave us an incredible living document of life at the time.
The Sweet Flypaper of Life is narrated by a grandmother and throughout the story, she takes us through her entire family lineage. We hear about her sons, daughters, grandchildren, neighbors, and janitors. But, the majority of her narration centers around her grandson Rodney, who she describes as not quite operating on the same plane as everyone else. She opens the story by telling us about his lack of desire to work. Hughes writes that Rodney “never will be integrated with neither white nor colored, nor work, just won’t.” This makes him an enigma in a story where everyone around him is trying as hard as they can just to get by.
Beyond this beautifully written description of Rodney, we also get to see him. Through DeCarava’s photos, we see Rodney being idle, relaxing under trees, sleeping all day. The only time Rodney likes to move is when it’s time to dance. We see that too, as DeCarava pictures him intently starting at a jukebox, suddenly being woken from his idle slumber. There is power in Rodney’s idle nature, he is a stark contrast to those around him, and that worries and scares his grandmother, and to a lesser extent his community.
As his grandmother says, “This world is like a crossword puzzle in the Daily News – some folks make the puzzles, others try to solve them.” Some characters are better at solving this puzzle than others, but no matter what, everyone who is not writing the puzzle must wake up every day and try again to solve it. Even those with big dreams have their subtle flaws, those who work all day to support themselves have no energy to live at night. There’s a beauty in waking up every morning to a new puzzle, but also an exhaustion.
The story excels most when there is a complete synthesis between the photos and writing. Langston Hughes and Roy DeCarava seem to have a supernatural connection at times, as Hughes perfectly crafts a story around DeCarava’s dark and molasses-like photos. The line, “I done climbed up and down a million subway steps” is accompanied by two images: One of a mother descending into the dark subway tunnel holding her child, and a slightly smaller image of the lonely and barren subway car. Both images are printed dark, so you can just barely see the whites and the blacks slip away into obscurity. But this darkness is not hiding anything, if anything, like dark chocolate, the depths of the blackness makes the entire story richer.
Neither DeCarava nor Hughes are most famous for their work on The Sweet Flypaper of Life, but this collaboration perfectly encapsulates what makes their work so enchanting. It’s a beautiful book and a quick read. Finally, the book forces you as a reader to insert yourself into the story. As the narrator describes, “yes, you can set in your window anywhere in Harlem and see plenty. Of course, some windows is better to set in than others mainly because it’s better inside.”