The
Silver Trout Fishing Network by Yun Dae Nyeong begins with the narrator reminiscing about his
childhood fishing trips with his father. In particular, the narrator discusses the way they
fished for silver trout together and how for many years afterward, he made the return journey to
the rivers where the silver trout spawned.
In the present day, the narrator
receives a mysterious invitation from the Silver Trout Fishing Network, quickly followed by a
phone call regarding the invitation. The caller seems very knowledgeable about the narrator, who
is greatly unsettled by this. However, he ultimately recognizes the caller as an old lover from
three years prior. This leads to the narrator reminiscing about that meeting.
It is revealed that the woman on the phone was working as a model for a swimsuit
commercial; the narrator was one of the photographers. The conditions of the shoot were
difficult, and both of them were in a place of loneliness and disillusionment. They connected on
the beach, discussing migratory birds and silver trout, and shared landscapes from the past.
Their relationship continued for several months afterward, but it was repetitive and joyless. In
their last meeting, she left him behind, disappearing from his life until he receives the
invitation and the call.
Both frightened and excited by the possibility of
seeing her again, he accepts the invitation. A mysterious woman drives him to the club meeting,
and she says the club is a sanctuary for people who feel rejected by life in some way. They
cannot abide the world as it is and so have built their own home with people just as different
and lost as themselves. At the club, the narrator is finally reunited with the woman who
disappeared three years ago. Though their reunion cannot be described as joyful, it helps the
narrator realize that, like the silver trout, he must return to his origin, the place where
[he] had belonged.
There are two main themes in this story: loneliness and
belonging, and disappearing and returning. Loneliness is evident throughout the story, including
in the narrators description of his home, where he drinks beer alone on a sofa which seemed to
cry out for a visitor, listening to the sad songs of Billie Holiday. Its emphasized in the
reminiscence of the relationship with the model and the resigned repetition of their dates,
like people stranded on an island with nothing else to do. Both the narrator and the model
longed for connection but didnt know how to achieve it. The Silver Trout Fishing Network was
founded as a way for others, similarly alone but searching for a place to belong, to connect and
find some kind of peace.
Disappearing is present from the beginning of the
story, when the narrator reveals that on the day he was born, his father was absent. Its further
illustrated by the reference to Billie Holiday, who took her own life; the image of the Hopi
Indians, standing on a windy mesa waiting for eternal oblivion; and the discussion of the
birds flying away from the beach where the narrator and the model met. The tone of these
discussions is melancholy, yet they carry the seeds of hopeif not for happiness, then for peace.
Though his father was gone at his birth, he always returned. Billie Holiday lives on in her
music, and theof the Hopi is remembered in Edward Curtiss postcard, on which the narrators
invitation to the Silver Trout Fishing Network is delivered. Migratory creatures find their way
home year after year, and the silver trout always returns to the place of its birth, in order to
die.
The theme of disappearing and returning is, in a way, a parallel to that
of loneliness and belonging. Loneliness comes from leaving behind your home, or being left
behind. Belonging is found by returning to your origins and in finding company with those who
are like youwho are on your side. By the end of the story, the narrator has finally started his
journey to belonging. As the woman in the red hearse says, they must return to the place they
must goa cemetery ... dreaming of rebirth.
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