When I was growing up in the South, in the late 1970s, there was no such thing as postmodern irony. Pop culture was held close in a hungry embrace, not at arm's length. Kiss, disco and the Carpenters were the embodiment of both fantasy and reality. When Karen Carpenter sang, "Rainy days and Mondays always get me down," I turned up the volume out of identification, not bemused detachment.

Kar...

On this day in 1983, Karen Carpenter died at her parents' home in Downey, Calif., of cardiac arrest, which was caused by anorexia nervosa. She was thirty-two.