February 24, 2006

  • Final Club

    For the feast of St. Matthias
    (traditional calendar)--
    from Amazon.com, a quoted Library Journal review of Geoffrey Wolff's novel The Final Club:
     
        "'What other colleges call fraternities, Princeton calls Eating Clubs.
    The Final Club is a group of 12 Princeton seniors in 1958 who make
    their own, distinctive club....
        Young adults may find this interesting, but older readers need not join The Final Club.'
    -- Previewed in Prepub Alert, Library Journal 5/1/90.  Paul E. Hutchison, Fisherman's Paradise, Bellefonte, Pa. Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc."

    From The Archivist, by Martha Cooley:

        "Although I've always been called Matt, my first name isn't Matthew but
    Matthias: after the disciple who replaced Judas Iscariot.  By the
    time I was four, I knew a great deal about my namesake.  More than
    once my mother read to me, from the New Testament, the story of how
    Matthias had been chosen by lot to take the place of dreadful
    Judas.  Listening, I felt a large and frightened sympathy for my
    predecessor.  No doubt a dark aura hung over Judas's chair--
    something like the pervasive, bitter odor of Pall Malls in my father's
    corner of the sofa.
        As far as my mother was concerned, the lot of
    Matthias was the unquestionable outcome of an activity that seemed
    capricious to me: a stone-toss by the disciples.  I tried with
    difficulty to picture a dozen men dressed in dust-colored robes and
    sandals, playing a child's game.  One of the Twelve had to carry
    on, my mother explained, after Judas had perpetrated his evil. 
    The seat couldn't be left empty.  Hence Matthias: the Lord's
    servants had pitched their stones, and his had traveled the farthest."