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.”