There’s always a moment of anticipation, of bristling, silent dread, in the great films about catastrophe. The bustle and noise of a film’s expository passages recede. Some of the house lights go out. A hush falls– and maybe even the crickets stop cricking. Don Delillo’s classic postmodern novel White Noise, far from a popcorn page-turner, nevertheless captured this sensation well: a prestigious college town menaced by a toxic cloud on its outskirts. We experience a grim awakening to distinctly modern terrors from the p-o-v of an insecure middle-aged professor and his over-educated, chatterbox family. Taunted by their equally motormouthed TV sets, this egghead clan reasons and dissembles its way around panic about as efficiently as a laborer shoring up a levee with paper towels.

Last week I witnessed a lot of folks reaching for the paper towels in New York City. At my day job, well-heeled co-workers and superiors fretted over their investments in the wake of a careening stock market but quickly cheered themselves up by noting that the financial panic was good for our company’s business (no, not pharmaceuticals or pawn brokerage). There was casual talk of pulling vast sums out of banks and stashing cash at home– then rumors about criminals, wise to this practice, going on burglary sprees in upscale neighborhoods. There was a lot of good humor, but it was definitely gallows humor.

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