I am writing this as a newly minted fan of the 1970s easy-listening duo, the Carpenters, and their music.  I had no preconceived ideas about their life stories and until recently, only had the vaguest recollection of the songs that were their greatest hits.  The most attention I had ever paid to them was when it was announced in February 1983 that Karen Carpenter had died of complications from Anorexia Nervosa.  In fact, I had long suffered under the incorrect assumption that Karen and Richard Carpenter were a married couple, when they were actually siblings.

This biography, Little Girl Blue, was published in 2010 and is billed as ‘unauthorized’ and ‘definitive’.  It was written without the participation of her brother and partner in the duo, Richard Carpenter, or any of the Carpenter family.  This is not to say that Richard tried to inhibit this book in any way; he simply chose not to actively contribute to it.

Schmidt spent a great deal of time covering the musical aspect of her life.  Reading reviews of this book revealed to me that all this was familiar ground for long-time fans.  I was hoping that the author would delve more deeply into the psyche of a woman who was so gifted as a drummer and a singer, and yet so troubled that she literally starved herself to death.  What I got was disappointingly superficial.

There was little effort on Schmidt’s part to delve into anorexia nervosa at all: the causes, symptoms, warning signs.  Karen Carpenter’s fans crave an understanding of what drives someone to such self-destructive behavior.  If the author had stepped away from the story for even one chapter to give an overview, it would have enriched his story of her life tremendously.  Instead, he sums it up as simply being a response to having no control over one’s life, eating being the only thing that one can control.

Schmidt gives us a litany of the people that he says controlled Karen.  Despite his protestations that he didn’t wish to demonize anyone, the author paints Karen’s mother Agnes, and to a lesser extent Richard, as the villains in this tragedy, in that they were the two people that exercised the greatest control over her.  Agnes always felt that Richard was the true star of the family and that everyone, especially Karen, should do everything to support that.  Richard, a gifted musician, was the creator of the ‘Carpenters sound’, and felt that he was the one best able to showcase Karen’s prodigious singing talent.  Schmidt suggests that Richard harbored some jealousy towards Karen, which I don’t buy, and resentment, which I do buy, towards the world at large for failing to recognize his talent and his contribution to the duo’s success.  He bristled at being referred to merely as ‘the piano player’ for the Carpenters.

Bit players in this story are the executives at A&M Records, highlighted by the episode of their tepid response to her solo album effort with producer Phil Ramone.  After completing the project in New York, Karen brought it back to California for a hearing by A&M executives and Richard.  Track after track was met with stony silence.  In the end, Herb Alpert, the A in A&M, called it “unreleasable”.  Karen was very upset, of course, but agreed to shelve the project.  It should be made clear that A&M didn’t have the power to block the release, the production being funded largely by Karen herself.  It was ultimately Karen’s decision.

The true villain of this story was Tom Burris, whom Karen married in August 1980 after a whirlwind courtship.  It was a marriage that never should have happened for multiple reasons.  Most importantly he lied about his ability to have children, and his façade of wealth.  Though they separated 14 months later, the divorce was not final at the time of her death.  Even so, Burris cannot be blamed for her anorexia, as she was at least five years into it by the time she married him.

The biggest problem I have with this biography is the way Karen Carpenter is portrayed by the author.  It is embedded in the title, ‘Little Girl Blue’.  She appears as a mere child, an empty vessel into which everyone around her poured their hopes and dreams.  Despite being an adult she had no control over her life.  What the author didn’t drive home was that she had no control because she never took control.  She made a few feeble attempts but the people around her resisted and she gave up rather than persisting.  In the end, Schmidt comes across more as a fan than a biographer.  I suppose if the people want to know more about anorexia nervosa, they will have to look elsewhere.

What an amazing organ the human brain is!  It has an almost limitless capacity to learn new things, right up to the end of life.  I have recently read or listened to, three books that talk about the brain and its ability to cope with and adapt to new circumstances.  In a word, it’s a property called neuroplasticity.  It’s too complex for me to try to explain here, so the best way to understand it is to start with Norman Doidge’s book, “The Brain that Changes Itself”.  The most remarkable chapter in this book is about a woman who was literally born with half a brain.

After that, try Oliver Sacks’ book, “The Mind’s Eye” about how the brain copes with brain disease and injury.  Sacks includes a chapter on his loss of sight in his right eye due to cancer.

Next, I suggest Nicholas Carr’s “The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains.”  Yes, you are being influenced even as you read this blog posting.

Other suggestions: “Thinking in Pictures” by Temple Grandin, a woman with autism who specializes in the design of large-scale livestock handling facilities.

If you prefer fiction: “Memory Book” by Howard Engel in which the detective hero, Benny Cooperman, find himself in hospital, with no memory of how he got there.  He must use his deductive powers to piece together events.  The story parallels Engel’s own experience with stroke and the loss of his ability to read.  A detailed account of his experience can be found in Sacks’ book mentioned above.

The short answer, in my opinion, is NO.  Our book club just finished discussing The Sentimentalists by Johanna Skibsrud, the 2010 Giller Prize winner.  All I can say is, “Huh?”  Major newspaper critics very kindly described it as ‘lyrical’.  That may be true if ‘lyrical’ is a synonym for ‘pedantic’, ‘pretentious’ and ‘self-indulgent’.  It’s 200 pages of an anonymous narrator mostly talking about what’s going on inside her own head.  This is supposed to be a war book, and the point appears to be the exploration of the reasons for the narrator’s father seeking out the father of a war buddy killed in Vietnam.  I ploughed through the endless introspection in the hopes of getting to that conclusion.  Unfortunately, frustratingly, there was no conclusion.  The author left me to come to my own.  When the book ended without that conclusion, I very nearly sent it across the room.  I did come to one conclusion: if the central premise of the Novel is never resolved, then what’s the point of writing it at all?  Frankly I think the author couldn’t decide how to end the book and so didn’t at all.

It’s no wonder that the author went to Gaspereau Press to get published, whose maximum print run for any book is 800 copies.  No major house would consider publishing this mess.  When this book was announced as the Giller winner, Gaspereau created a great clamour for it by initially refusing to farm out the printing to another publisher that could produce it in sufficient quantity.  Finally, they ‘reluctantly’ agreed to allow Douglas & McIntyre to do a mass print run.

Gaspereau is well known for the attention they pay to the materials, design, and binding of a book.  By all accounts it was a beautifully bound volume.  That’s the problem.  If this book is any indication, they seem to be more interested in creating an artifact than publishing quality literature.  This is a case where the publisher most definitely prefers that you judge the book by its cover.