Senior reader Alicia Romero talks with NER author Nick Mandernach about lament and litany, finding the fun in failure, and the endearing humor in his story “Young Sheldon Room Tone” from issue 46.2.
Alicia Romero: Your story struck me as a focused deep contemplation of a troubled man. It sounded to me like a Humphrey Bogart film noir voice-over. We immediately meet a worried, angry, sad guy who lets us in on the voice in his head. You described it to me as a kind of litany—tell me more about that.
Nick Mandernach: A kind of lament, yes! I love your phrase “deep contemplation of a troubled man.” That touches on Bible passages I read growing up. The psalms treated pain as a serious subject with the capacity for wisdom. “Heal me, Lord, for my bones are in agony.” Whoa! Off-the-cuff sorrow. That sadness is usually downplayed in contemporary stories. Chekhov said to write objectively so the reader fills in the emotion: “. . . try to be colder.” Michael Caine puts it like this: “If you fight the tears, the audience will cry for you.” Good strategy, but this piece goes in the other direction. Our sound guy is devastated and says so. His plight rubs against a comic voice.
My intention going in wasn’t biblical. I love the Marie-Helene Bertino story “Sometimes You Break Their Hearts, Sometimes They Break Yours.” Her speaker has the early line, “I am bad at telling stories.” That ineptness killed me. So funny and surprising. I wanted to do that! Then I found a subject and worked organically. For a short story, I usually don’t rewrite until I work through a draft.
AR: The lines “I lost too much in too short a time. You understand that or not,” appear in the first paragraph of the story and are repeated later. Did you ever worry that the narrator’s voice might alienate your audience?
NM: That withholding is a play on other confessional stories. I’m thinking of Holden Caufield’s line, “. . . but I don’t feel like going into it if you want to know the truth.” I’m thinking of Sal Paradise: “I had just gotten over a serious illness I won’t bother to talk about . . .” Our sound guy would like to be that cool, but he can’t help himself. In the very next paragraph he spills and immediately tells the reader absolutely everything. He’s guileless as a storyteller, sometimes inarticulate. It’s part of his vulnerability and one of the reasons that we care about him.
AR: While we’re on the subject of vulnerability, how does risk play into your creative process?
NM: As an improviser, I have a friendly relationship to risk. Failure can be more fun than success. My family played a card game called Hearts, in which you wanted the lowest number of points. To avoid them, you tried to end the game with as few hearts as possible, but you could also “shoot the moon” and try to get all the hearts. This piece shoots the moon; the narrator struggles with storytelling. Most times that would dock me with a reader, but he gets it so wrong so often it’s right. The risk also might be called for by the material—the inexpressability of grief.
Death and loss bewilder. I’m graceless when grieving. Totally artless. There are writers who explain the experience elegantly and articulately but I can’t and don’t. The speaker in the story shares that quality.
AR: During his runs in Echo Park, the narrator meets Manny, a boxing coach who becomes a kind of guardian angel. Could you talk about how you developed this savior-like character?
NM: Manny is based on fitness coaches I’ve had, who meant more to me than I did to them. He’s an unwitting guardian angel. Our sound guy sees him as a mentor, but Manny is trying to get thirteen dollars a session. We catch a small glimpse of Manny’s life outside of coaching, which seems chaotic. He resists symbol, but suffers from the precarity and unlivable conditions many of the characters experience. It’s part of the policy perils of LA.
AR: Given current events in our country and Los Angeles more specifically, who or what does Manny symbolize?
NM: In terms of current events? We don’t know Manny’s status, but he avoids the police. He suffers from the precarity and unlivable conditions many of the characters experience. The horrific raid on the Echo Park Lake encampment by councilman Mitch O’Farrell was a rallying cry for Hugo Soto-Martinez, who unseated him in the district. Soto-Martinez then flipped on his campaign promises and is now brutally sweeping encampments. Seven unhoused people die each day in Los Angeles. While our community resists ICE raids in 2025, the LAPD violently arrests press and protesters just like in 2021.
AR: Humor is prevalent throughout “Young Sheldon Room Tone.” I found myself laughing and even questioning my laughter multiple times, like when the narrator pretends that his hearing loss can be solved by reading lips despite the fact that he’s a sound guy on a television set. His unfulfilled death wishes reminded me of the physical comedy in the silent film Keystone Cops. Why is the element of humor important to you as a writer?
NM: I love to entertain! As a writer, I’m a host. You took the time to hang out and read my work, so I want you to enjoy yourself. With all the lament stuff, I also like to mess around and have a good time. My favorite songs work that way; the lyrics are painful, but the instruments are playful.
I love physical comedy. For the last fifteen years I’ve performed silent improv shows with a group in Los Angeles. (You mentioned silent films over the phone, maybe that’s where the influence comes from?) Taking the emphasis off words forces me to think more simply and strangely. When I’m struggling for a “funny line,” I might move away from cleverness and towards gesture and activity. That physicality takes on added resonance in this story, where healing is tied to the body.
AR: The mood and tone of your story carry the reader through surprising and unexpected emotions. The piece ends with the narrator calling Manny (who never responds) with a litany of “Dread. Hope. New Jobs,” before concluding with the memory of his son’s head smelling “like sunblock even in winter.” This ending is powerful in so many ways—it struck me like prayer. How did you land on the story’s “resolution”?
NM: In endings I look for the story to do something it hasn’t done before. This story moves through lament and resolves in litany. It’s a series of pleas and joys and concerns. In religious services there would be a call-and-response, but that doesn’t happen here. Throughout the story we worry our narrator won’t recover. The last paragraph has the cadence of unity. He’s able to integrate events in his life—his grief, his love, his successes, his disappointments—but it isn’t uncomplicated. He confesses all this to a defunct workout Instagram account. Is he healed? Is getting “normal” the goal? Can we be healthy when our community is sick? Is this grace? I’m not sure. That’s the resonance for me.
Nick Mandernach is a fiction and television writer based in Los Angeles. His work has appeared in EPOCH, Split Lip Magazine, and The Florida Review. He currently writes on The Great North.
Alicia Romero has had a long career in education. She taught AP English in the San Diego Unified School District, lead the English department in the Oakland Unified School District, and taught English curriculum to English teachers at San Diego State University and second language acquisition at McGill University and Saint Mary’s College. She lives in Middlebury with her husband and dog Bailey, where she enjoys her retirement by traveling and playing piano. She has been a reader for New England Review for seven years.