THE CARPENTERS

The emphasis here leans more to Karen than to Richard, the acknowledged brains behind their arrangements. Their story is classic Americana, in both success and failure: two clean-cut kids from the suburbs who just love to make music together hit it big, and when Richard develops a pill addiction and Karen hits a low of 78 pounds, Coleman lays the blame on their overbearing and undemonstrative parents. To this day their mother insists that there was no psychological reason behind her daughter's starvation, believing instead that ``Karen was simply gripped by an iron determination to get very thin and stay that way.'' Coleman also traces Karen's problems back to early negative media comments about their ``square'' appearance amid the wild atmosphere in the music industry of the late-60's. While he keeps insisting that the group was never bland, Coleman's anecdotes reinforce the plain-toast image: their reproducing, note for note, the arrangements from their records when performing live; changing lyrics—e.g., ``sleep with you'' became ``be with you''—so as not to sully Karen's good- girl image; and proudly appearing at the Nixon White House in 1972. It is true that at the time of Karen's death relatively little was known about anorexia nervosa, but the eating disorder has since become familiar, and Coleman's glancing treatment of it reveals little that is new. A dual-celebrity bio that retells well-worn stories.