A friend told me once of the difficulty of verifying which ascetic or holy person did what, since the ascetic in question would spawn admirers who would go so far as to take his or her name, not merely repeating the ascetic's actions, but exacerbating them, performing feats that were yet more exacting, yet more extreme. Some of the Christian saints and desert fathers are composite figures - but isn't this intruiging! To exist as a style rather than a person. Or, better still, to become a style, a certain style (imagine writing: I am a Gilles Deleuze, I am a Marguerite Duras) ...