Truck and Barter

Paglia on Sontag

Not quite in line with standard price theory, but still worth remembering:

Negotiations began in earnest to bring The Visit off.... All available money was pooled: it was twice what Bennington had ever paid any speaker. But the total was still only half of Sontag's normal fee... In the melancholy postmortem, I saw that the seeds of disaster were already sown in that preliminary agreement. Bennington, paying twice the normal amount, expected double the quality. Sontag, accepting half her fee, planned to exert half her normal effort. As Oscar Wilde said, "When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers."

--Camille Paglia. "Sontag, Bloody Sontag", Vamps & Tramps. p. 349.

Posted at November 5, 2004 09:37 PM

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