“The County Clerk has his office in a huge red brick building known as the Old Court House. Civil cases are, in fact tried there, the proceeding inexorably dragging out until the contestants die or abandon litigation. This is due to the vast number of records pertaining to absolutely everything, all filed in the wrong place so that no one but the County Clerk and his staff of assistants can find them, and he often spends years in the search. In fact, he is still looking for material relative to a damage suit that was settled in 1910. Large sections of the Old Court House have fallen in ruins, the others are highly dangerous owing to frequent cave-ins. The County Clerk assigns the more dangerous missions to his assistants, many of whom have lost their lives in the service. In 1912 two hundred and seven assistants were trapped in a collapse of the North-by-North-East Wing.”
William S. Burroughs, “Naked Lunch”, 1959.
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