report no.: 201
informant: TMc
source: Remainder (a novel) by Tom McCarthy location:
date: 2006

167: Forensic procedure is an art form, nothing less. No, I'll go further: it's higher, more refined, than any art form. Why? because it's real. Take just one aspect of it — say the diagrams: with all their outlines, arrows and shaded blocks they look like abstract paintings, avant-garde ones from the last century — dances of shapes and flows as delicate and skilful as the markings on butterflies' wings. But they're not abstract at all. They're records of atrocities. Each line, each figure, every angle — the ink itself vibrates with an almost intolerable violence, darkly screaming from the silence of white paper: something has happened here, someone has died.