Literature in the Age of the Self: A Conversation with Rachel Cusk, Brian Dillon, and Vidyan Ravinthiran

This bonus episode consists in a recording of an authorial roundtable held at University College London on the 16th June 2025. Entitled ‘Literature in the Age of the Self’, it brought together three highly acclaimed contemporary writers whose work evinces a marked preoccupation with the experience and the representation of the self.

In this conversation chaired by Scarlett and Alice, Rachel Cusk, Brian Dillon, and Vidyan Ravinthiran discuss the self in connection with notions of style, character, and time. They also reflect on the relations between creative and academic writing, between literature and other arts, and on the status of the self in the age of AI and social media.

Guest Speakers:

Rachel Cusk, novelist, memoirist, essayist, and playwright.

Brian Dillon, essayist, memoirist, novelist, and curator.

Vidyan Ravinthiran, poet and memoirist and Associate Professor of English at Harvard.

Hosts:

Scarlett Baron, Associate Professor of English at University College London.

Alice Harberd, PhD student in the Philosophy Department at University College London.

In this episode, we discuss the fifth and final section of Cusk’s Outline alongside a draft book chapter by James Lewis entitled The Peculiar Allure of Another’s Aesthetic Worldview. Lewis argues that appreciating someone’s aesthetic tastes is a central part of achieving intimacy with them. We discuss Cusk’s narrator’s prose style as a reflection of her aesthetic taste and ponder what it allows us to infer about her sense of self.

Speaker names:

• Dr. Scarlett Baron, Associate Professor in the English Department at UCL.
• Alice Harberd, PhD Student in the Philosophy Department at UCL.
• Dr James Lewis, Lecturer in Philosophy at Cardiff University.

In this episode, we discuss Chapter 6 of Cusk’s Outline alongside an essay by Murdoch called The Idea of Perfection. In this essay, Murdoch argues that the way we pay attention to the world is ethically significant. We talk about how Cusk’s narrator attends to the world, and what this leads the reader to infer about her character and sense of self.

Speaker names:

• Dr. Scarlett Baron, Associate Professor in the English Department at UCL.
• Alice Harberd, PhD Student in the Philosophy Department at UCL.