Robert Boyers: A Beauty

Robert Boyers wrote the essay "A Beauty" for the literary magazine Agni to describe the most beautiful man he had ever met. When I first read the title of the essay, I assumed it would be about a woman or a piece of artwork, but it ended up being about a man named Charles Newman. Boyers met him in the 1970s when Newman was approaching forty years old and editing the journal he founded, TriQuarterly. Newman was also a gifted novelist. Boyers became friends with Newman, but Newman's beauty never went unnoticed by Boyers or anyone else they encountered. Along with describing the most beautiful man he's ever met, Boyers wrote this essay to explain the effect of beauty on people and to be read by adults of all ages and gender. In order to fully achieve his purpose he uses his friend as an example throughout the entire story. Many younger women liked to flirt with Newman and he enjoyed doing it back. Boyers also explained that the beauty had an effect on Newman himself. When Newman got married for the fourth and last time, he was also dating another girl across the country. Because he was so good looking, Boyers had the confidence to be in a relationship with more than one woman. It was actions like this that made Boyers only base his opinions of Newman's beauty from the outside. I think that Boyers only partially achieved his purpose. He did a wonderful job of describing his friend, which I believe was the main reason for writing the essay. However, I think he could have done a better job of explaining the effect of beauty on others, because he really only described the effect of Newman's beauty on others. It may have been completely intentional for Boyers to keep the focus on Newman, but I would have liked the essay better if he had tied in some other examples.

Charles Hamilton Newman (1938-2006)

from his wikipedia page