When Donny Dunn (Richard Gadd), the protagonist of the autobiographical Netflix sensation “Baby Reindeer,” recalls the act of kindness toward a stranger that would come to derail his life, his initial explanation is deceptively simple: “I felt sorry for her.”
Donny is a fledgling comedian in his late twenties, tending bar at a London pub to make ends meet. Martha ( Jessica Gunning) is a heavyset, middle-aged frump who claims to be a high-powered lawyer but simultaneously insists that a cup of tea is beyond her means. Donny— maybe amused, maybe intrigued, definitely pitying—gives her one on the house. She becomes a regular and, after finding his e-mail address on his personal Web site, inundates him with dozens of missives a day, many of them brimming with lust and misspellings. She follows him home and to his gigs. Her convictions about their relationship—first and foremost the belief that they’re in one—are pure delusion. But Martha also senses a truth about Donny that no one else does. Early on, she asks, “Somebody hurt you, didn’t they?”
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der May 20, 2024-Ausgabe von The New Yorker.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der May 20, 2024-Ausgabe von The New Yorker.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent? Anmelden
INSIDE JOB-"Hit Man"
Years before Hannah Arendt coined, in the pages of this magazine, the phrase \"the banality of evil,\" popular films and fiction were embodying that idea in the character of the hit man. In classic crime movies such as \"This Gun for Hire\" (1942) and \"Murder by Contract\" (1958), hit men figure much as Nazis do in political movies, as symbols of abstract evil.
WHATEVER YOU SAY
Rereading Jenny Holzer, at the Guggenheim.
SUBCONSCIOUSLY YOURS
Does every generation get the Freud it deserves?
BY A WHISKER
Louis Wain and the reinvention of the cat.
Beyond Imagining
Bessie, Lotte, Ruth, Farah, and Bridget, who had been lunching together for half a century, joined in later years by Ilka, Hope, and, occasionally, Lucinella, had agreed without the need for discussion that they were not going to pass, pass away, and under no circumstances on.
STATES OF PLAY
Can advocates use state supreme courts to preserve-and perhaps expand-constitutional rights?
THE LONG RIDE
The surf legend Jock Sutherland's unlikely life.
ARE WE DOOMED?
A course at the University of Chicago thinks it through.
GOD EXPLAINS THE RULES OF HIS NEW BOARD GAME
Guys, want to play this new board game? It’s called Life. No, it’s not “one of God’s impossible-to-understand games that take three hours to learn.” It’ll be fun, I promise!
RED LINE
With the election approaching, the U.S. and Mexico wrangle over border policy.
