“The idealists and visionaries, foolish enough to throw caution to the winds and express their ardor and faith in some supreme deed, have advanced mankind and have enriched the world.” — Emma Goldman, social activist (1869-1940)
Sometimes one just has to think outside the box.
Alison Larkin is one such being.
When Larkin arrived in the Berkshires in 2010, she had just published “The English American,” a novel based on her life; had produced a successful one-woman show; and had landed a sitcom deal. The work was based on her life as an adoptee raised in England and Africa by a Scottish father and an English mother. She went on to meet her American birth parents as an adult. It is funny and sweet and perceptive, much like the author. Then the sitcom deal was gone, divorce was looming and a change was needed. A friend suggested she check out Great Barrington, “but not in February,” so of course, she started her investigations in that cold and dreary month.
Nine years later, Larkin has become the heartbeat of the audiobook industry in Berkshire County. She said she was “looking for an artistic community” where she could find or create work for herself while she raised her two children. Having already recorded the audio version of her novel, she approached Tantor Media, an audiobook company, which set her up with a home studio Larkin describes as much like a “cupboard,” but she went to work in earnest.
Fast-forward several years and dozens of audiobooks later, and Larkin is using her talents to confront stereotypes, address social injustice and produce award-winning audiobooks through her company, Alison Larkin Presents.
Go to the Bookloft in Great Barrington Thursday, Dec. 12, from 5 to 7 p.m. and you will see her handiwork on display. Expect a lively discussion about gender and the patriarchy as she asks us to consider what literature might have been like “if gender had been irrelevant in the 19th century,” and “what if Scrooge were a woman?”
Panel guests will include Boxxa Vine, a Monterey-based drag queen and performer who plans to appear in Dickensian garb; Patty Fox, the lesbian minister at the Congregational church in West Stockbridge; and Sherene Smith, who identifies as queer and is a local social worker whom Larkin says is passionate about working with the LBGTQ community. The event will be livestreamed on Facebook. Refreshments will be served and participation is encouraged.
The party is meant to launch Larkin’s two latest ventures in which the genders of the main characters were switched in these “freely adapted” versions of two of Dickens’ classics, “A Christmas Carol” and “Great Expectations.”
Larkin said she prefers to work with “female-centric” protagonists and explained that, one day, her high school-aged daughter asked, “What does it matter if you are gay or straight, or a man wanting to be a woman or a woman wanting to be a man?
Larkin said, “Well, it doesn’t matter because all that matters is love.” And she said, “’If you love somebody then who cares?’ She looked very perplexed and added, ‘Why are there people who actually care?’”
The explanation Larkin offered her daughter was that people only care because “we live in a patriarchal society and have done for hundreds of years.”
Larkin explained that her children are being raised in a community, “this” community, which is actually “rather progressive. And it blew my mind. I thought, ‘What if I was to take one of the most famous characters in English literature, Pip in ‘Great Expectations,’ and change nothing but the gender of the protagonist?”
All that was altered in the novel were pronouns and descriptive nouns, but the result is most intriguing. As Larkin explains, everyone in that world treats Pip as if it were perfectly normal for a girl to have great expectations, for a girl to learn to read, for a girl to kiss a girl, for a girl to be able to go into a bar and not get molested.
Scrooge, naturally, was next. “Is it still pure Dickens,” Larkin said, “but I’ve changed this one thing and it’s very exciting. It also gave me a chance to narrate Dickens.”
If you can’t make the book launch, you can catch Larkin live on Monday when she celebrates the 244th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth. Larkin, who chooses her subjects from classical literature, has released all of Austen’s work on audio, even including Austen’s early writing efforts in her audiobooks “Northanger Abbey and the History of England.”
The celebration is a tea party to be streamed on Facebook with guest of honor Caroline Jane Knight (Jane Austen’s fifth great-niece) and Larkin. It can be viewed live on the Austen Heritage Facebook page.
Knight is the chair of the Jane Austen Literacy Foundation and was the last of the descendants to be raised in Austen’s ancestral home in Chawton, England, though she now lives in Melbourne, Australia, and will be appearing virtually. Knight is the author of “Jane & Me: My Austen Heritage,” which was narrated by Larkin.
The actual party will take place in Larkin’s cozy West Stockbridge studio where tea and era-appropriate cakes will be offered. Viewers’ names will be deposited in a hat and one lucky party watcher will win a free download of Larkin’s “The Compete Novels of Jane Austen,” totaling 81 hours.
