Fritz Eager

From Philosopedia

Frederick (Fritz) Eager (1942 - 1970)

Eager was the son of Ohio-born children's author Edward and his schoolmate Jane Eberly Eager.

In his 1957 New Canaan (Connecticut) High School class with Warren Allen Smith, the red-headed honors student wrote in his journal,

They say God made man in his own image.

I'd like to see this yellow-red-white-black god

Whose parts despise each other so bitterly.

Smith has written of his 15-year-old high school senior,

My old 1957 grade book shows that Fritz Eager was one of only four of my hundred students who earned a 95. In addition to reading and turning in a documented research paper about Hamlet and another about haiku, he chose to evaluate Aldous Huxley's Point Counterpoint; Franz Kafka's Castle; Joyce Cary's Captive and the Free; Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author; and a book by a Danish author I'd never heard about. Fritz graduated from Harvard.

Five of Eager's paintings are found at a website created by Jeanne McDonagh, "The Fritz Eager Art Collection, New Canaan High School."

The Fritz Eager Art Collection began as a purchase award established in 1969 in the memory of New Canaan High School art student Frederick Eager. The collection consists of outstanding senior work in the visual arts and is selected by a committee of artists and the school staff. Once the work is selected it is purchased by the trustees and becomes part of a permanent collection of student art that is widely displayed throughout the school.

About Edward Eager

Fritz's father, Edward McMaken Eager (20 June 1911 - 23 October 1964), wrote books for children and was a lyricist and playwright. He grew up in Toledo, Ohio, and was in the Harvard University Class of 1935. He lived in New York City for over one decade, then moved to New Canaan, Connecticut. In 1938 he married Jane Eberly and they had one son, Frederick.

A childhood fan of Lyman Frank Baum's Oz series, he began writing works to read to his son when he had read all the Oz books to him. Eager also wrote of his high estimation of the works of Edith Nesbit (15 August 1858 - 4 May 1924), calling the Fabian Society author who wrote under the gender-neutral pseudonym E. Nesbit "one of the best children's authors of all time."

Eager dropped out of Harvard when his first play, Pudding Full of Plums, was successful and he moved to New York City. But he did most of his writing at his Connecticut home. Half Magic was set in Toledo, while Magic or Not? and The Well Wishers were set in New Canaan.

Eager's first book, Red Head (1951) was a collection of poetry written for his son, who despised having red hair. He then wrote two children's' books featuring animals as protagonists, entitled Mouse Manor (1952) and Playing Possum (1955). The former is said to be inspired by the Beatrix Potter stories and tells the story of two mice who marry and start a hotel. The latter is based on an incident that took place at the Eager family's Connecticut home, when a family of possums was found to be living in a trash can.

According to an online biography unfortunately by an unnamed individual, it was while Eager searched for books to read to his young son that he discovered the works of British novelist E. Nesbit.

Nesbit's influence is clear in his first novel, Half Magic (1954). After all, the book opens with the four children who star in the story reading Nesbit's The Enchanted Castle. Half Magic was a critical success, as was his next book, Knight's Castle (1956). This novel was loosely based on Nesbit's The Magic City interspersed with Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe. It would seem that the success of Eager's books was responsible for the Nesbit books being brought back into print in the late 50s, available in the U.S. for the first time in decades.

Knight's Castle served as an indirect sequel to Half Magic, as the second book stars the children of two of Half Magic's protagonists. Magic by the Lake (1957) follows the further adventures of the Half Magic kids, and The Time Garden features the Knight's Castle characters, but both sequels tell the story of a sort of crossover between the two generations.

Eager's next books, Magic or Not? and The Well-Wishers (1959 and 1960) feature a new cast of characters and strange sets of circumstances that, unlike those in the previous books, may or may not actually be magic at work. But that, of course, is for the reader to decide. His final book, Seven-Day Magic (1962) features yet another group of children and their encounter this time with a magic book.

Eager's books involve groups of four or five, usually well-read, young children who experience extraordinary, magical events not unlike those they read about in books. What's different, though, is that this magic comes with rules that the children must learn. If these rules are broken, this will lead to all sorts of consequences. Still very much set in the real world, Eager refers to the adventures the kids experience as "daily magic."

Possibly the best parts of Eager's novels are his constant references to other books he felt that children should read. Not only are such books name-dropped in his books, but occasionally his characters even step into the worlds of their favorite stories. E. Nesbit was Eager's biggest influence, but Eager gives props to a multitude of books and authors (see the recommended reading page for more). One reviewer of Half Magic called Eager "far and away the best" of Nesbit's imitators. Another stated, "Seldom has a major author been imitated so blatantly and in many ways so successfully as E. Nesbit by Edward Eager." Said yet another, "It is readily apparent that Eager is not merely an imitator. [...] Perhaps it is for this reason that his works are still read today."

In 1964 , Eager died of lung cancer at age 53. A couple of sources I've read suggest that before he died, Eager was working on an eighth book, in which all eight of the Half Magic/Knight's Castle children embarked on an adventure together, but he died before it was completed and the work was never finished by anybody else. In addition to his works for children, Eager also wrote, adapted, or cowrote several plays, usually as the lyricist.

Incidentally, Fritz Eager also went on to attend Harvard University, but he actually managed to graduate, which his father took great pride in. Unfortunately, it appears as though Fritz also died, shortly after his dad. His high school holds an art scholarship and exhibition program in his name. Similarly, there exists a scholarship at Harvard for creative writing students named for Edward Eager. See the links page for more information on both. Jane Eager, who apparently set up both programs, has also died, though she lived into the early 2000s.

Correspondence

From Denmark, Fritz wrote the following to his English teacher, Smith: