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The great distinction of Hughes' approach is that he can move, commandingly, from a Miro canvas to transvestite hookers in the street without missing a beat -- and bring to both the same kind of rigorous attention and full-bodied sensibility. Here is a critic who can put Joe Sixpack and Jacques Derrida in the same sentence. And if at times the sheer weight of detail may almost be dizzying to a newcomer, the text is enlivened at every turn by all the familiar props of the Hughes voice -- the mischievous erudition (translating a Latin motto as "Far down! Far out!"), the rococo diction ("fribblers" and "cutpurses" abound) and the Augustan bite (asides that wither "the mingy veneering of today's 'lite' architecture"). Beneath the virile lucidity of the prose, however, is a subtle and sensitive mind that can lead the reader, patiently, into complexity: "In Gaudi one sees flourishing the egotism achieved by those who think they have stepped beyond the bounds of the mere ego and identified themselves with nature, becoming God's humble servant but copying their employer."
It is, ultimately, for its unpretentiousness, its vigor and its sense of style and language that Hughes loves Barcelona. For the same reasons, one suspects, Barcelona would love Hughes.