It's Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books is the first feature film by Richard Linklater, filmed on Super 8 and edited at a public-access television cable TV station, with Linklater starring and handling all production duties. The film was released in 1988.
The film is 85 minutes long and features little dialogue. In its minimal and non-traditional plot, the main character travels about the country meeting with various acquaintances when not taking part in various mundane, day-to-day activities. There is no real rising action or climax, and Linklater's character does not change substantially throughout the course of the film.
The film never enjoyed a widespread release. It is available on DVD only as a bonus feature on Slacker from The Criterion Collection.
Famous quotes containing the words impossible, learn, plow, reading and/or books:
“It is impossible to give a clear account of the world, but art can teach us to reproduce it—just as the world reproduces itself in the course of its eternal gyrations. The primordial sea indefatigably repeats the same words and casts up the same astonished beings on the same sea-shore.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“Oh, that I knew where I might find him, that I might come even to his dwelling! I would lay my case before him, and fill my mouth with arguments. I would learn what he would answer me, and understand what he would say to me. Would he contend with me in the greatness of his power? No; but he would give heed to me. There an upright person could reason with him, and I should be acquitted forever by my judge.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Job 23:3-7.
Job, of God.
“A plow, they say, to plow the snow.
They cannot mean to plant it, no....”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“After reading Howitt’s account of the Australian gold-diggings one evening,... I asked myself why I might not be washing some gold daily, though it were only the finest particles,—why I might not sink a shaft down to the gold within me, and work that mine.... At any rate, I might pursue some path, however solitary and narrow and crooked, in which I could walk with love and reverence.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The novel is the one bright book of life. Books are not life. They are only tremulations on the ether. But the novel as a tremulation can make the whole man alive tremble.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)