Editor’s Note
Dear Reader,
Welcome back to another issue of RevUU, a student-run literary magazine affiliated with Utrecht University. Since 2020, the magazine has given a platform to new critical voices, allowing writers to tackle topics related to contemporary literature and explore how those works reflect our modern times.
Life these days sometimes feels like a race against the clock. This issue, Clockwork, delves into frictions of the past, the journey of trying to find yourself in the present, and hope for the future. Our writers use this theme in ingenious ways — travelling through time to trace concepts across history, reflecting on the persistence of memory, and disentangling how minutes are measured by the labour of writing.
The magazine is divided into four subthemes: Once Upon a Time, First Hand/Second Hand, Tick Tock, and Clock Out, with creative writing interspersed throughout.
Once Upon a Time
Writers in this subtheme tackle the past, probing for answers in historical documents and questioning how close an author can ever really get to the truth. One writer, Lena Hoffmann, weighs the ethics of bringing the past to life in her review of Said the Dead, while Annet Hatzistamou takes a different approach, investigating the duty of the writer to make the past believable in Murder in Paris in ’68.
First Hand/Second Hand
First Hand/Second Hand features an eclectic mix of reviews and creative essays, in which the authors spotlight identity in an era where time never seems to stand still. Kyra Gent discusses an identity crisis caused by immigration in her epistolary essay on The Ocean Would Paint Me Blue, while Bronté van der Helm dives deeper into the difficulty of finding one’s identity through words used by others in her take on Where Are the Kings.
Tick Tock
Articles in Tick Tock are accompanied by a sense of urgency, of time running out, of climate changing, and the world spiraling into irreversible disaster. However, our advice is to read the articles closely, as you’ll find that underneath this angst for the future, hope is hidden. The dangers of climate change explored in Emma Houdijk’s review of Arborescence provide a hopeful portrayal of humanity, while reading about a tradwife’s turmoils in Jip Soekhai’s take on Yesteryear might make you utterly content with your own life.
Clock Out
To “clock out” is to put down your work, to reckon with the labour of the day. The craft of writing is labour done to understand the world and our place within it, as writer Floor Wilhelm explores in her piece on The Spinster Cookbook. Clocking out also implies the finality of craft, the creation of a finished product that takes on a life of its own, as is the case in Lindy Klompstra’s piece on The Shadow of the Object.
A special note of thanks to Dr. Mia You for her guidance and advice during the creation of this edition of RevUU.
And one last thing: Don’t fear the future. A different, more hopeful story can always be found within the pages of a good book.
Enjoy reading,
Jip Soekhai & Amanda Rahn
– Managing Editors
