Editorial: Farewell to the ‘real’ Linus

Maurer met “Peanuts” creator Charles Schulz in 1950 at a Minneapolis art school|

“Thus endeth…” – Linus Van Pelt

When Sonoma Valley resident Linus Maurer died earlier this week, so died the namesake of one of the most beloved characters of 20th century literature – the philosophical, blanket-toting moral compass of the “Peanuts” gang, Linus Van Pelt.

To put it mildly: Good grief, Charlie Brown.

Maurer met “Peanuts” creator Charles Schulz in 1950 at a Minneapolis art school where the two fledgling cartoonists were working as art instructors in the age of straight-laced, irony free strips like “Dick Tracy,” “Terry and the Pirates” and “Li’l Abner.” Schulz was in the early stages of “Peanuts,” and still developing new characters to enter into Charlie Brown’s, Lucy’s and the long-forgotten Shermy’s orb of post-modern childhood.

Schulz once recalled unveiling his early sketches of Lucy’s younger brother to Maurer, “a friend” who sat near him at the art school. Schulz decided then and there to name the character Linus – and one of the all-time-best alter-egos was born.

Of course, the hand-drawn Linus went on to world fame – yet Maurer was no slouch in syndication, either. His “Old Harrigan,” “Abracadabra” and “In the Beginning” strips enjoyed varying degrees of success, and Maurer’s penchant for puzzle features – like the long-running “The Challenger” for King Features – allowed Maurer one of the most enviable careers imaginable to the young at heart: drawing pictures and making up games.

Of course, Maurer is best known in these parts for “Newshound,” the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink single-panel cartoon he’d drawn for the Index-Tribune for two decades-plus. In its heyday, “Newshound” was classic “new journalism” cartooning – wry social commentary laced with an existential fondness for the absurd. Favorite targets of Maurer included unabashed narcissists, and our increasingly sheep-like American society.

While his drawing hand may have grown shaky in recent years – his nerve never did.

That he was Linus, and Linus was he, must have been a strange status to live with. To be sure, Maurer enjoyed the attention that came wrapped in a security blanket. In 2003 he cut ribbon on a Linus statue erected in his hometown of Sleepy Eye, Minnesota; he blushed last year when I told him that I boast to my kids that “the real Linus” works at my newspaper. (Maurer, of course, worked from home as a freelancer, though for years he’d drop in twice weekly with his latest gags.) Still, it must have been something else to know your two-dimensional doppelganger is an international icon, while you yourself live a quiet, nondescript life in the Valley of the Moon.

At 90, Maurer died of the most enviable of maladies: a life long-lived. Yet there’s the sad loss of Linus Maurer to his family, friends and community – and still something more. While they only share a name, our Linus, in one small way, symbolized the Linus as much as Schulz. It has been said that in Charles Schulz lived all the characters – Charlie Brown’s feelings of inadequacy, Lucy’s temper, Linus’s empathy, Schroeder’s artistry and Snoopy’s imagination. He was all of them, yet none of them.

But to people around here, Linus was Linus. And, in that, is what’s most troubling about his passing.

The “Peanuts” characters aren’t supposed to grow old. They’re not supposed to die. That football should always be there for the kicking, and the Red Baron should always be lying in wait. That mailbox should always be open for the Valentine that will never come.

And a blanket must always be ready, soft and warm.

But real life is not a comic strip. It doesn’t come to satisfying closure after four panels and a joke.

Goodbye, Linus. And goodbye, Linus.

I’ll still boast to my children that I was your editor – both of you.

Email Jason Walsh at Jason.walsh@sonomanews.com.

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