Heath Course Pak

by Tan Lin

Poetry. Like its predecessor, HEATH (plagiarism/outsource) , HEATH COURSE PAK exists somewhere between a Project Gutenberg version of Samuel Pepys Diary and a minute-to-minute news feed and blog of Heath Ledger's death. Sad, appropriated, lyrical and confused, the book contains a brief history of recent performance art, a legal defense of plagiarism, the diary of a poetry workshop at the Asian American Writer's Workshop, an MP3 protest song, and an examination of SMS and GMS technologies as distribution networks for human sadness. Multi-authored, and with numerous text blocks and photos, the revised edition contains 52 pages of new material, an interview, an annotated text, autographed photos of Jackie Chan and Heath Ledger, e-PostIts, COAs, and coffee/tea stains.

Genres: Poetry

140 pages, Paperback

First published February 28, 2012

Reviews

[Peterr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heath Course Pak turns out to be a tough read, in part because Tan Lin has chosen to write a book for, and about, the very attention span that doesn’t want to read it: that unique awareness, which evolved on the eve of Y2K, when two thousand years shrank to three simple characters; the distracted mind. For a reader looking forward to familiar reading territory—aka, any semblance of pulp—Lin’s explorations might not seem tasty. HCP’s meat is engineered from dumpstered text that is, like fat, the very stuff we’ve been conditioned to avoid paying attention to: post-it notes, a legal disclaimer from Project Gutenberg’s, the blogosphere’s coverage of Heath Ledger’s death, and the eText preface to The Diary of Samuel Pepys.

Certainly not the usual subway fare. Or is it? When I am without a book on the train, I’m often bored enough to take in a J Crew ad on one of those scratched panels that presumably hide some wires just under the car’s ceiling. HCP offers the chance to read a J Crew ad reprinted in a book all the while seated underneath one of those panels. And while the ad on the train feels intrusive, the ad in text offers that intruded upon reality as a literary experience; The World of Words We Don’t Want, an interesting-if-nightmarish scenario.

[Jai · Rating 4 out of 5]

What is HEATH? // Read my review of Tan Lin's HEATH COURSE PAK at Lantern Review. // http://www.lanternreview.com/blog/201...

Like following Heath Ledger’s death over the internet—through the rapid replication of speculative information, quotations, paraphrased material, tags and images as they unravel, reproduce and become felt by a social network—Lin’s assemblage of HEATH is a kind of muscle memory for feelings that are erased, re-written, read, scanned and searched repeatedly within a complex system of users, readers, commentators, followers, friends and authors. // Read more at Lantern Review ---> http://www.lanternreview.com/blog/201...