(Aug. 7) To ask what jazz funerals have in common with famed political consultant James Carville sounds like the set-up for some mordant witticism, but it’s not. This very month the answer, the connection, is Louisiana-based journalist/author/documentarian Jason Berry.
In that connection, moreover, we can celebrate some of Louisiana’s wonderful uniqueness.
This is a big month for Berry, whose work for decades has spanned groundbreaking research on civil rights and on the Catholic Church’s child-abuse scandal, but who has been known longest as a nuanced chronicler of Louisiana’s music and culture. This month, in a home-state culmination of a 20-year labor, Louisiana Public Broadcasting (Aug. 20) and WYES-TV in New Orleans (Aug. 26, Aug. 30 and Sept. 16) will air Berry’s documentary, “City of A Million Dreams: Parading for The Dead In New Orleans.”
Within a week of that announcement came official notice that Berry has inked a deal to write an authorized biography of Carville, the outspoken Democratic campaign ace.
One auteur, for what seem to be two very different subjects.
As Carville explains, his willingness to work with Berry on the book — Berry’s idea, and on which Berry has full editorial control, Carville none — has almost everything to do with Berry’s record on Louisiana cultural topics such as that in the jazz funeral documentary.
For the new “James Carville has Something to Say,” Carville said he agreed to cooperate because “so much of who I am or was shaped by cultural, familial, religious (background, and) I think Jason understands that better than anyone else. … (and) more than anyone else is capable of understanding exactly who I am — in ways that I’m not sure that I can explain sometimes.”
Noting that he already has published memoirs and been the subject of two major documentaries, Carville said this book is different: “I do think it’s not going to be the standard political biography.” Then, specifically referencing Berry’s new documentary and other work with admiration, he said Berry “knows the musical stuff, he knows the history and all the Catholic stuff. … and how much civil rights and race has shaped my life.”
Berry said that in conversations through the years with Carville, he felt the same connection…. [The full column is at this link.]
