First Encounters: A Book of Memorable Meetings

Shows and describes the first meetings of Lenin and Trotsky, Garbo and Barrymore, Mahler and Freud, Chaplin and Cocteau, Lang and Goebbels, Chekhov and Tolstoy, Wilde and Whitman, and De Gaulle and Roosevelt

This collaborative effort, which began as a feature in the Atlantic, brings together 65 short essays that describe first meetings between two well-known people. Nancy Sorel's engaging text is illustrated by her husband Edward's witty and stylish color drawings. We learn that when FDR told French wartime leader Charles de Gaulle he could not support him because he hadn't been elected, the touchy French officer replied that Joan of Arc had not been elected either. The Sorels have selected from diverse fields for their duos, including politics (Richard Nixon and Madame Mao), literature (Henry James and Rupert Brooke), theater (Paul Robeson and Peggy Ashcroft) and philosophy (Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir). Many couples were chosen tongue-in-cheek, for instance, the accidental encounter in an elevator between filmmaker Orson Welles and newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, on whom Welles based his unflattering portrait in Citizen Kane. A browser's delight.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

These full-color drawings by Edward coupled with brief narrative texts by Nancy have been culled from the Atlantic. Among the most entertaining encounters is the chance meeting in an elevator between Orson Welles and William Randolph Hearst around the time Citizen Kane was released. After Hearst turns down Welles's chutzpah-laden invitation to the premiere, the director taunts him: ``Charles Foster Kane would have accepted.'' In another scenario, some of Al Capone's mugs kidnap musician Fats Waller at gunpoint and make him play for Scarface at a birthday bash. It's the Prohibition era, and the party lasts three days, after which ``Fats has acquired several thousand dollars in cash and a decided taste for vintage champagne.'' Other encounters, like that between Jean-Paul Marat and Charlotte Corday, don't end so happily. There are 65 encounters, and the Sorels make each one entertaining--and a few of them quite moving. (Book-of-the-Month Club selection) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.