A rather low-key hour with two best-selling young authors whose fictional

characters, as WFB puts it, "share a special kind of aimlessness which is associated only with America, whose affluence can bring on a certain kind of decadence. Supply-side decadence." Miss Eberstadt: "It was only in the '60s that there was a particular break, when people thought it was no longer appropriate to make value judgments--to teach their children to have some kind of fear of God, to obey their parents--and when children were taught that... creative self-expression came before morality." ... Mr. Buckley: "Tell me, why is MTV so mesmerizing?" Mr. Ellis: "I think it is [because] the images are moving so quickly. The images are moving faster than they ever have before in the century in terms of film ... It gets to be like a narcotic.... I think I was influenced as much by movies as I was by books."