Some people confuse David Keith with Keith David. I often have trouble with Russell Hittinger versus Reinhard Hütter. But most of all the trouble for me is Perry Anderson, Benedict Anderson, Bernard Williams, and Raymond Williams.

When I’m reading or writing without an internet connection, the only secure name is Perry (though I often forget he’s the brother of Benedict). The rest of the first and last names get mixed up and I suppose Bernard Anderson wrote about imagined communities, Benedict Williams was a Marxist critic, and Raymond Williams was an analytic moral philosopher.

This has been true for more than ten years and I don’t expect my mind will ever be able to get these names straight.