Torcuato Luca De Tena And His Work The Twisted Lines Of God

Journalist, writer, director of the newspaper ABC, 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 Twisted Lines of God , an almost obligatory book for every psychologist.

Some say that talking about the Marquis Luca de Tena is referring to a very specific time 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 the political, 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 shareholders, he decided to leave everything behind and go to Mexico. He leaves his country and all those social and political ties that rooted him with Spain and chooses to shape a desire, a very clear goal: to turn 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 to know for himself what those worlds were like that, at that time, were contained within the psychiatric hospitals.

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

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

The 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 Blanco y Negro magazine  in 1891, and later he would do the same with the newspaper  ABC  (1903) and the Prensa Española society (1909).

Due to the work of his father, a diplomat by profession, the family spent several years residing in Chile. It was here that the young Luca de Tena studied law, although he never practiced this profession.  At fourteen he had already founded his own school newspaper and at 18 he had his first published book of poems. His passion was literature, not law, hence when he returned 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, and as expected of him, he began to direct 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  La brújula loca ,  Pepa Niebla   or  El Fabricador de Sueños.

He won the Planeta Prize in 1961 for La mujer del otro, as well as other recognitions such as the Fastenrath Prize from the Royal Spanish Academy in 196 or the Prize from the Sociedad Cervantina de Novela. Torcuato Luca de Tena died in Madrid on June 1, 1999. He was 75 years old.

God’s Crooked Lines (1979) a novel about antipsychiatry

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

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

Argument

God’s Crooked Lines  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. Its purpose is to investigate a murder, a crime whose perpetrator is among the residents of the hospital themselves.

Little by little the protagonist establishes a relationship with all that complex human “fauna” that inhabits the center, delving into her medical conditions, her disorders, 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 himself for his story.  It was the Hospital Nuestra Señora de la Fuentecilla, where there were about 800 residents. On the other hand, he wanted to use the metaphor of crooked lines or “misspellings” to refer to the mentally ill, that person who, due to his condition, seems at first glance to be a “mistake” made by God himself at the time of creation. .

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

God’s Crooked Lines is a book that follows the antipsychiatry approach. Thanks to Alice Gould’s gaze, we can experience a greater closeness to those people from whom the institution itself  draws its sense of humanity to transform them into beings locked in cages and hypermedicated.

An exquisite x-ray of mental illness

Torcuato Luca de Tena uses a very polished language in which there is no shortage of moments for humor. This allows him to outline each character to perfection, there where to 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 Remo”, “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 1980s where we could still find terms that are now obsolete (and pejorative) such as oligophrenia.

It does not matter that almost forty years have passed since Luca de Tena offered us this intense and original book where we can cross that line between our society and that threshold in which 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.