THE PLEASURE OF the club is a guilty pleasure, a pleasure of satisfaction sitting at the edge of arrogance, the accomplishment of acceptance, the brio of belonging. How can I reject it? Could I possibly join a club that would have me as a member? Only if I’m wooed.

ACCIDENT, ANCESTORS: AT the end of Woody Allen’s film, Deconstructing Harry, all of Harry Block’s fictional characters gather in his living room to encourage and thank him for creating them and this inspires him to create a new character who muses: “All people know the same truth; our lives consist of how we choose to distort it.” Or how about: our lives consist of the clubs we belong to and how we and they distort the truth. The first distortion is the accident of birth and our instant and accidental belonging to a club called a family.