Torcuato Luca de Tena and his work The Twisted Lines of God

Journalist, writer, director of the ABC newspaper, academic of the RAE… Torcuato Luca de Tena was one of the most prominent figures of the social and intellectual elite of the 20th century in Spain.. His consecration in literature came in the 60s with the Planeta Prize, but his most special work would come a few years later: The crooked lines of Godan almost obligatory book for every psychologist.

There are those who say that talking about the Marquis Luca de Tena is referring to a very specific era in Spanish history.. As a war correspondent, heir to a magazine and a newspaper, he was the reflection of a complex period full of changes. Now, beyond politics, his relationships or his conservative ideas, a very specific moment in his life draws attention.

It was in 1973, when after being evicted from his newspaper by the shareholders, he decided to leave everything and go to Mexico. He abandons his country and all those social and political ties that rooted him with Spain and chooses to give shape to a desire, a very clear goal: to devote himself only to literature.

Thus, between 1973 and 1999, Torcuato Luca de Tena wrote ten novels, three comedies and a book of poems. However, one of his most special projects would be know firsthand what those worlds were like that, at that time, were contained inside psychiatric hospitals.

After this experience and what he learned, he would write one of the most unique books for the world of psychology: The crooked lines of God.

Torcuato Luca de Tena: businessman, politician, journalist and writer

Son of a family with a long journalistic tradition, Torcuato Luca de Tena y Brunet was born on June 9, 1923 in Madrid. His grandfather, Juan Ignacio Luca de Tena, had founded the famous magazine Black and Whitein 1891, and later he would do the same with the newspaper ABC (1903) and the Spanish Press society (1909).

Due to the work of his father, a diplomat by profession, the family spent several years residing in Chile. It was here where the young Luca de Tena studied law, although he never practiced this profession. At the age of fourteen he had already founded his own school newspaper and at 18 he had his first book of poems published. His passion was literature, not law, which is why upon returning to Spain he began a career in journalism.

With the arrival of World War II he served as a press correspondent in London; later, after the war, he would cover different events in Washington, the Middle East and Mexico. Then, as expected of him, he started running the newspaper ABC while he was already making his first forays into politics.

Literary recognitions

Starting in 1973, Torcuato Luca de Tena served as a member of the Royal Spanish Academy. His literary successes began to weave a history as a renowned writer where he also made brilliant forays into the children’s and youth genre with The crazy compass, Pepa Niebla or the The dream maker.

He won the Planeta award in 1961 for The other’s wife, as well as other recognitions such as the Fastenrath Prize from the Royal Spanish Academy in 196 or the Cervantine Novel Society Prize. Torcuato Luca de Tena would die in Madrid on June 1, 1999. He was 75 years old.

The crooked lines of God (1979) a novel about antipsychiatry

Torcuato Luca de Tena gave the field of psychology an almost essential novel. It should be noted that it is not an easy work to read. However, the literary quality added to the faithful portrait it describes of that underworld contained in the psychiatric hospitals of the time, make this work an absolute reference for every curious person, for every lover of this genre.

Likewise, it should be noted that It is prefaced by the famous psychiatrist Juan Antonio Vallejo-Nágera. In addition, the book is dedicated to the doctors, nurses, guards, caregivers and other professionals who care for the mentally ill in these centers.

Argument

The crooked lines of God tells the story of a woman, Alice Gould. She is a young woman who claims to be a detective and that, far from suffering from any psychological disorder, her confinement in the psychiatric hospital is voluntary. Her purpose is to investigate a murder, a crime whose perpetrator is among the hospital’s own residents.

Little by little the protagonist establishes a relationship with all that complex human “fauna” that lives in the center, delving into their medical conditions, their disorders, into that complex and dark anatomy that is often contained in these institutions. The plot, as we see, drags us towards that enigma where we try to discover if Alice is telling the truth or if she herself is another resident of the psychiatric hospital.

The crooked lines of human nature

Torcuato Luca de Tena lived for 18 days in a psychiatric hospital in Mexico in order to document his history. It was the Nuestra Señora de la Fuentecilla Hospital, where there were about 800 residents. On the other hand, he wanted to use the metaphor of crooked lines or “spelling mistakes” to refer to the mentally ill, that person who, due to his condition, seems at first glance to be a “mistake” committed by God himself at the time of death. creation.

We say “it seems,” because Luca de Tena wrote this book for a very specific purpose: to dignify the collective. Let the world see that mental illness is not a spelling mistake, it is a complex piece of our society that deserves more attention, better treatments, respect and above all, to be seen from a fairer perspective.

The crooked lines of God It is a book that follows the antipsychiatry approach. Thanks to Alice Gould’s perspective we can experience greater closeness to those people whom the institution itself It rips away their sense of humanity to transform them into beings locked in cages and hypermedicated.

An exquisite x-ray of mental illnesses

Torcuato Luca de Tena uses a very polished language in which there is no shortage of moments for humor. This allows him to profile each character to perfection, where he can oscillate between madness and lucidity, between fragility and greatness, between the human and the tragic.

In the book we meet such sublime characters as “The Cyclops Woman”, the twins “Rómulo and Remus”, “Charito” López or Ignacio Urquieta… All of them present us with a psychological profile, a mental illness. However, it should be noted that It is the portrait of an era, that contained in the late 80s where we could still find obsolete terms (and pejoratives) such as oligophrenia.

It doesn’t matter that almost forty years have passed since Luca de Tena offered us this intense and original book where we cross that line between our society and that threshold where the universe of psychological disorders opens. It is always a good time to return to good books, especially those that leave us a message to reflect on.

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