Word: hellzapoppin
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...artist John Bratby's love letters were put up by Sotheby's. Bratby, the Kitchen Sink school leader of the 1950s, had a hellzapoppin love affair with a much younger Diane Hills, to whom he wrote letters, as did Hills' father (less affectionately), as did Bratby's wife Jean Cooke (less affectionately still). "I understand from my husband," wrote Cooke, "the man with whom you fornicate on the floor of your flat..." All 25 boxes of the highly charged mess are now in some stranger's possession...
American Tabloid is history as Hellzapoppin, a long slapstick routine careering around a manic premise: What if the fabled American innocence is all shuck and jive? To underscore his thesis, Ellroy uses spurts of unimaginable violence the way other writers deploy commas and periods: "Sal burned a man to death with a blowtorch. The man's wife came home unexpectedly. Sal shoved a gasoline-soaked rag in her mouth and ignited it. He said she died shooting flames like a dragon...