The Serial Killer Has Second Thoughts: The Confessions of Thomas Quick
Sture Bergwall, known in Sweden as Thomas Quick, has confessed to more than 30 murders, eight of which resulted in convictions. Heath comes face-to-face with Bergwall as he prepares to make another startling confession:
“Here, five doors from the free world, it is hard not to feel a little apprehension. There is an odd moment after I first arrive when the translator has gone to the bathroom and the two people from the hospital who will sit by the door as we talk are not yet in place, and so it is just myself and Bergwall, meeting for the first time, exchanging stilted pleasantries. He takes a seat on one side of a low coffee table—a position chosen, I later discover, because he doesn’t like to see the staff who are monitoring him. I move toward the sofa on the other side of the coffee table. But then he overrules me. He gently taps on the chair right next to him. Okay.”
Have You Heard the One About President Joe Biden?
An in-depth look into the life of the Vice President—and the question of 2016:
“‘He wants to be the best vice president ever,’ staffers told me, months ago, when I first started spending time with Joe Biden. That was all the talk last winter. Hillary would almost certainly be the nominee, not Biden, they said, whenever the 2016 issue came up, which wasn’t often. But then, abruptly, Biden’s stock started steeply rising, at least in the eyes of the public. Washington had been hyperventilating about the fiscal cliff, and Obama sent Biden in to broker a deal. Then came the killings in Newtown, Connecticut, and Obama sent Biden out to rally the public, Biden in to reason with Congress, Biden over to talk to the NRA. In 2013, Biden has emerged increasingly more visibly potent than his boss. THE MOST INFLUENTIAL VICE PRESIDENT IN HISTORY? one headline proffered.
“‘Well, he would be crazy not to keep his options open,’ staffers started saying then, whenever the 2016 issue came up. Which still wasn’t often. The parlor game was not my reason for being there. I wanted to get to know Biden. I wanted to understand why ‘President Joe Biden’ has such a preposterous ring to it, and I wanted to know if he knew it did.”
The Audacity of Bro
The Leader of the Free World has a half brother named Malik who would like to get out of his brother’s shadow:
“On his way to a grandiose theory of what has happened to the Obamas, Malik simply refuses to be a bit player, and sometimes seems to circumvent his brother entirely. He earnestly claims that while Washington is the capital of America, Siaya is now ‘the capital of the world,’ the source of it all—of the family God chose to bring equality to the human race. Whatever comes next, Barack H. Obama II isn’t necessarily the center of that plan.
“‘This is not even about him anymore,’ Malik says, as usual avoiding his brother’s name. ‘It’s an act of God! Each of us will make a difference in somebody’s life.'”
‘My Body Stopped Speaking to Me’: The First-Person Account of a Near-Death Experience
Our recent Longreads Member Pick by National Magazine Award winner Andrew Corsello from GQ is now free for everyone. Special thanks to our Longreads Members for helping bring these stories to you—if you’re not a member, join us here.
“My Body Stopped Speaking to Me,” is a personal story about Corsello’s near-death experience, first published in GQ in 1995.
The Night Tony Soprano Disappeared
An excerpt from Brett Martin’s book Difficult Men. Sopranos creator and show runner David Chase and actor James Gandolfini were talented, complicated, and, at times, difficult men who created an iconic TV show:
“The massive job was made possible at least in part by creating a world in which other people managed the rest of his life. When the show became a success, Chase moved into the penthouse of the Fitzpatrick Manhattan hotel on Lexington Avenue, with the hotel staff at his disposal. He dined at the same restaurant several times a week, alternating periods at Daniel and Café Boulud. (The ease of getting restaurant reservations, he said later, only half joking, was one of the major reasons to keep extending The Sopranos’ run.) At work, he withdrew behind levels of gatekeepers. Chase’s assistant learned to institute a ‘five-minute rule’ whenever bad news was delivered: the amount of time needed for the desk-kicking and yelling to stop and a more rational response to commence. Not that there was a lot of bad news. ‘Nobody said no to David. Ever,’ she says. ‘Except Jim [Gandolfini]. And even he said no only by not showing up.'”
Dear Leader Dreams of Sushi
Novelist Adam Johnson meets Kenji Fujimoto, a man who became the Dear Leader’s cook, confidant, and court jester:
“Many people envied me because I was a favorite of Kim Jong-il. At the parties, I poured sake for Shogun-sama, but Shogun-sama also poured sake for me, which was very rare. Every time Shogun-sama said to me, Do you like me? I answered, Of course, I like you so much. I was thinking about making a joke—I don’t like you, I despise you. I wanted to say that as a joke, but I had no courage. Shogun-sama said, If you like me, why don’t you kiss me on the cheek? I don’t remember how many times I kissed him. A hundred times? A hundred kisses. We would go to the sauna together, naked. Shogun-sama said, Oh, you have a good body, a masculine body. I said, I’m good at sports. It’s not too much to say I was a good playmate for Kim Jong-il. And every time he asked me to kiss his face, he always said to me, If you betray me, you will… Then he would go silent and make a gesture of a knife going into my stomach.”
Longreads Member Exclusive: My Body Stopped Speaking to Me, by Andrew Corsello
For this week’s Member Pick, we’re excited to share “My Body Stopped Speaking to Me,” a personal story from GQ writer and National Magazine Award winner Andrew Corsello about a near-death experience. The piece was first published in GQ in 1995.
The Luckiest Village in the World
What happened when the village of Sodeto won the largest lottery in the history of Spain:
“Ana, the Romanian, picks up the ringing phone. ‘Mommy,’ says her daughter, ‘apparently the Gordo was won in Grañén,’ and Ana says, ‘Is this a joke?’ She looks out the window and sees her friend Lolita in her pajamas, running to the mayor’s house, and she sticks her head out, and Lolita screams, ‘WE WON THE GORDO!’
“‘How much?’ asks Ana reflexively, and her friend says a number in pesetas, and Ana yells, ‘Tell me so I can understand!’
“‘One hundred thousand euros per ticket,’ she shouts.
“And Ana, in shock, races down to the bar. She remembers putting her ticket under the cash register, and where is it, and…
“There it is!
“Her mouth opens, but nothing comes out.”
The King of Oontz Oontz Oontz
A profile of Tim Bergling, a 23-year-old Swede who has risen to fame as a DJ the club scene as Avicii:
“Another black car to another greenroom, another show: The Lights All Night festival is a blur of kids in Fun Fur and neon going, ‘Are you rolling?,’ mesmerizing one another with light-up gloves. Tim has never taken the Drug Formerly Known As Ecstasy, which is sort of odd since MDMA is to EDM what cocaine was to disco. ‘I mean, I want to take it,’ he says the next day, eating a layover hamburger on the way to Vegas. ‘But I’m sort of afraid of anything that makes you feel out of control.’ Even though the kids in Dallas are his age, it’s hard to imagine him among them crowd-surfing in a neon tankini. ‘Yeah, I kind of missed all that,’ he says. ‘Because when I was 18, I couldn’t go out, and then when I could go out…’ he trails off.
“‘He gets mobbed,’ Felix says.”
My Gucci Addiction
The Friday Night Lights author on his shopping addiction:
“I own forty-three pieces of Gucci—twelve leather jackets, six evening jackets, five pairs of pants, six pairs of boots, four shirts, seven pairs of gloves, and three scarves. I own items from Acne, Affliction, Alexander McQueen, Alexander Wang, Balmain, Band of Outsiders, Belstaff, Bottega Veneta, Brooks Brothers, Burberry, Chanel, Charles David, Diane von Furstenberg, Helmut Lang, Ines, Jan Hilmer, J.Crew, Jimmy Choo, Jitrois, Jos. A. Bank, Joseph, Junker Designs, Loewe, Lucchese, Marc Jacobs, Mr. S Leather, Nike, Northbound Leather, Prada, Rag & Bone, Ralph Lauren, Roberto Cavalli, Saint Laurent, 7 For All Mankind, Thomas Wylde, Valentino, Versace, and Wesco. I also have had several pieces custom-made for me by an amazing designer named Carla Dawn Behrle, who specializes in leather; they’re worth every penny and more, given her fastidiousness and attention to detail. I apologize to those letters of the alphabet I have not gotten to yet. Zara, don’t give up hope.”