NONFICTION - Jan. 29, 1995

FIRST ENCOUNTERS: A Book of Memorable Meetings by Nancy Caldwell Sorel and Edward Sorel (Alfred A. Knopf: $29.95; 127 pp.) “First Encounters” is a collection of Edward Sorel’s legendary drawings from the pages of the Atlantic Monthly. The following is from the text accompanying this drawing of Isak Dinesen, Carson McCullers and Marilyn Monroe: “On the fifth of February, 1959, Carson McCullers gave a luncheon. She seldom entertained anymore, her health was so precarious, but Isak Dinesen was in town--New York, that is--for the first (and only) time, and there were two women she wanted to meet. McCullers was one. The other was Marilyn Monroe. . . . Monroe did look luscious in her black sheath with the pronounced decolletage and fur collar. Tanya (Dinesen), who weighed eighty-odd pounds, wore an elegant grey suit, her head swathed in a turban. After lunch she told one of her tales. . . . Then Carson, as she told it later, put a record on the phonograph, and she, Tanya, and Marilyn danced together--on top of the black marble dining table, she said. Blame it on the oysters and champagne.”