Pedro and Ricky Come Again: Selected Writing 1988–2020

Critic and filmmaker Meades (Peter Knows What Dick Likes) collects reviews, essays, reported pieces, and speeches over 30 years in this gargantuan and whip-smart outing. The entries are organized into thematic chapters that run alphabetically from “Art and Artists” to “Writers.” In “Concrete,” Meades sings the praises of oft-maligned brutalist architecture: “It is all exhilaratingly impure. It’s an oxymoron, a mongrel, centrifugal, simultaneously pulling in several directions.” He expresses a similar appreciation for the “monument to our unflagging creativity” found in slang, which he describes in “Language” as a style of communication that reveals the “raw creature” within. And in “Regeneration,” he extols Bristol as “the most visually exciting, gloriously impure and thrillingly incoherent of English cities because there are no consensuses—of style, building material, height or size.” Never afraid to go guns blazing (“Urbanism shares the properties of a cult,” and The Endless City, he writes, should be titled “The Endless Cliche”), Meades emerges as a fiercely independent thinker and a formidable intellect. His acerbic style carries the day, and readers bored of dry criticism will relish these piquant ripostes. (Aug.)