Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

This week on nybooks.com: Justice Stevens’s plan to amend the Constitution, Chang-rae Lee’s dystopia, how highly leveraged banks put the economy at risk, and a poem by Frederick Seidel. Plus Stendhal and revolution, Veronese’s masterpiece, and how China was never the same after Tiananmen.   THIS ISSUE SPONSORED BY THE BODLEIAN LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

The Refounding Father Cass R. Sunstein Justice John Paul Stevens reveres the American Constitution. Yet he has just published a book calling for six new amendments to the nation’s founding document. No Supreme Court justice, sitting or retired, has ever done anything of this kind.   ADVERTISEMENT   Let’s Go to Dystopia Diane Johnson Dystopian novels portray a society, usually of the future, that has arrived at the destination we’re all headed for if we don’t change now. The great dystopian novels and the scary developments they portray convince us of things that are all too possible in the society we live in, if we hadn’t spotted them for ourselves.   Curb the Banks! Roger E. Alcaly Much like polluters who don’t bear the costs they impose on society, large, highly leveraged banks create significant risks to the financial system and the economy but don’t shoulder the bill for the resulting damage. It’s a sweet deal and explains why they are fighting so hard against serious constraints on leverage.   ADVERTISEMENT   Robespierre Frederick Seidel Who wouldn’t like to have the power to kill Friends and enemies at will and fill The jails with people you don’t know or know Only slightly from meeting them a year ago, Maybe at an AA meeting, where they don’t even    use last names. Hi, I’m Fred. Instead of being someone who    constantly blames And complains, why not annihilate? Why not hate? Why not exterminate? …   More in the June 5 issue: Martin Filler on architecture, Joyce Carol Oates on Larry McMurtry, Adam Thirlwell on Lydia Davis, Marci Shore on Yiddish Ukraine, Quentin Skinneron Machiavelli   Stendhal’s Grudge Adam Michnik Why do we love Stendhal? We do not love him for his heroism, as he never was an indomitable conspirator for freedom or a martyr of any “right cause.” We love him for his lack of hypocrisy, for honesty toward himself.   ‘Majesty, Vehemence, Splendor’ Andrew Butterfield “The picture sends a glow into the cold London twilight. You may sit before it for an hour and dream you are floating to the water-gate of the Ducal Palace,” Henry James wrote of Veronese’s painting The Family of Darius before Alexander.   Tiananmen: How Wrong We Were Jonathan Mirsky Twenty-five years ago, I watched and listened as thousands of Chinese citizens in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square dared to condemn their leaders. I really thought the Communist Party was finished. How wrong we all were.