Quite often I can be in a bookshop standing beneath a great big picture of myself and paying for a book with a credit card clearly marked John Grisham yet no one recognises me. I often say I'm a famous author in a country where no one reads.
History is one of those marvelous and necessary illusions we have to deal with. It's one of the ways of dealing with our world with impossible generalities which we couldn't live without.