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| Undiscovered | 
 enlarge | Author: Debra Winger
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Category: Book
List Price: $23.00
Buy New: $9.30
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Avg. Customer Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 2078
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st Simon & Schuster Hardcover Ed
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 208
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.5 x 0.9
ISBN: 1416572678
Dewey Decimal Number: 791.43028092
EAN: 9781416572671
ASIN: 1416572678
Publication Date: June 10, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Celebrated for her indelible, Oscar-caliber performances in some of the most memorable films of the 1980s and 1990s, Debra Winger, in Undiscovered, her first book, demonstrates that her creative range extends from screen to page. Here is an intimate glimpse of an artist marvelously wide-ranging in her gifts. In fact, as this beguiling book reveals, Winger is that rare star who dared to resist the all-consuming industry that is Hollywood becoming her entire reason for being. "I love the work," she states, "and don't much care for the business." Yet she cares deeply for the people who have inspired her. We meet them (most famously, James Bridges, Bernardo Bertolucci; most dearly, her mother, husband, and sons) here, as Winger passionately makes her case for forging a life beyond acting -- and shows how she has done just that. Winger's screen performances have long been celebrated for their breathtaking emotional range, a quality that shines through in these pages. "When I was little," she writes, "someone told me that when you age, you turn into the person you were all your life." In this intriguing mix of reminiscence, poetry, storytelling, and insightful observation, a portrait of a life well-lived is strikingly rendered.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
 Exquisite Reflections from Top Actress June 16, 2008
22 out of 24 found this review helpful
Winger has always been a thoughtful, and, in many ways, mercurial actress. There is no question about her onscreen chops as a triple Oscar-nomineee and major star despite a rambling, choosy, relatively sporadic resume.
Then again, Winger's wonderfully versatile choices (and performances) have stood the test of time ('Terms of Endearment,' 'Officer & A Gentleman,' 'Shadowlands,' and 'Urban Cowboy'--even delicious second-tier fare like 'Black Widow'). Perhaps Hollywood's current crop of mediocre talents could take a life-lesson from the gifted Winger, in this regard: scrutinize your destiny, your integrity, choose what lasts.
This book is Winger's very compelling way of doing just that, in essay form. Winger demonstrates that her way with the written word is well nigh as charismatic as her way with a line of film dialogue. Naturally, it helps that she was thrust into myriad adventures by her success in the 80s and 90s (and has something of immediate interest to "play-off of"), but the book works just as convincingly as a document of sometimes aching human self-discovery. Winger is able to recount mood and mayhem with the skill of a charming raconteur and technique of a solid writer.
In fact, I'm pleasantly surprised at how good a writer Winger proves herself to be. The book moves, almost dreamlike, from reflective episode to incisive commentary, and not necessarily with a strict chronological purpose--these are essays from the very soul, after all. Winger is by turns funny and subtly provocative, and, of course, takes time to drop an appropriate number of industry names and anecdotes for those more interested in her career self-perception than with the equally direct assessment of her close family life...a life away from the shackles of fame.
In many ways, this is one of the more rewarding and exceptionally written memoirs to come directly from a major film star in recent memory. Winger infuses the book with wisdom and honesty; apparently she's not only earned it--she's chosen it, and that makes an impact here. The reader comes away with the feeling that one has been given a rare opportunity to glimpse the journey of a genuinely attuned "Traveller" through Hollywood and beyond, rather than a caricature of Hollywood overwhelming a Traveller's voice and personality.
Great collection of memoir-ish essays. She'd be wise to write a screenplay or a stage play, with talent like this. Well done, Ms. Winger.
 Not a biography or even a memoir, more like poetry June 21, 2008
20 out of 37 found this review helpful
I like biographies and I don't like poetry. I don't like essays that are all about feelings. I don't like vague. I don't like "the journey" when you learn nothing about the journey except generalizations. So obviously I am not going to like this book. You will learn next to nothing about Debra Winger in this book. She is an "arty" writer and it is arty and poetic, but it says very little. I had to search on the Internet to find out what happened to her in the accident she alludes to in the beginning of the book. I had to search the Internet to find out who the husband is she refers to as only A. or who these children, N. and B., are. It's like a personal journal that only she will understand what she's writing about, yet she published it. She does not discuss her movies or acting. She writes a little bit about her parents dying and how it impacted her. She writes a little about motherhood. It's like a meditation on serenity.
If I had seen this book at a bookstore and paged through it, read a few pages, I would have quickly figured this all out and not bought it. This is the kind of mistake you make when you buy a book sight unseen online.
Alternately Revealing and Cryptic Look a Rule-Breaking Actress' Journey of Self-Discovery July 31, 2008
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
If you've ever seen Rosanna Arquette's self-indulgent, worshipful 2002 documentary, Searching for Debra Winger, you caught a glimpse of a well-regarded actress whose self-imposed and ultimately short-lived retirement inspired the film's eponymous title. In the film, Winger is trenchantly sardonic about the inherent sexism in Hollywood and proves to be a perceptive non-conformist unwilling to compromise for a youth-oriented industry she doesn't respect. Her new book reflects much of those same qualities, and true to her independent attitude, it is most definitely not a straightforward autobiography. Rather, it's a series of anecdotal essays and poems - sometimes meandering, sometimes emotionally incisive - primarily focused on the past dozen years of her life, a defining period in which she quit the A-List and elected to live her own life on a farm in the Catskills with her family. Winger supplements her personal accounts with drawings of various passageways not by her but by Philippe Petit, an aerialist most famous for walking a tightrope between the twin towers of the World Trade Center in 1974. Although she has not met Petit, it's clear she is making an analogy between his particular talent and the balancing act she has been managing between being an actress and a wife and mother.
Winger does share how she has since returned to acting on an occasional basis these days but more on her terms since she is obviously finding fulfillment elsewhere. Not that it's been a carefree pastoral existence in upstate New York since she had to take care for her dying mother. Winger's passion, so evident in her early 1980's roles like An Officer and a Gentleman and Terms of Endearment, is still very much in evidence in this book as she continues her quest to live life to the fullest regardless of the circumstances. At the same time, she can be unnecessarily cryptic about her motivations and thoughts. It's obvious she is avoiding any hint of a "tell-all" with this book, but the drawback is that we never really get her perspective on her infamously tempestuous reputation in the film industry. Perhaps she has evolved enough from her past to not feel the need to readdress it, but I have to admit I frankly haven't and would have loved to hear her side of things. The actress admits that she would prefer working more these days, and so would we. In the meantime, as Winger puts it, she is "always searching for the next door, the next role, the next change". Perhaps she could include the next book, a more revealing autobiography.
I love Debra Winger June 13, 2008
7 out of 21 found this review helpful
I haven't yet read this book, but I have heard several passages read aloud by Debra Winger at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston (MFAH). Debra Winger has been such a mystery to me. Over the years I have heard she was a volunteer in a kibbutz, that she was strong-willed and not always easy to work with, that she had a breakdown of some kind around the time she made The Sheltering Sky, that she retired from film forever. I saw a DVD of Rosanna Arquette's documentary Searching for Debra Winger. But I had no idea of the high regard I felt for this actress or how ingrained she was into my filmgoing consciousness. Then I stumbled upon her book-reading at MFAH and was delighted. I never feel like bothering celebrities I meet, but I wanted to hug her. She looks great, and said she feels her best film work is ahead of her. I can't wait.
Not a typical biography July 13, 2008
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
This is not your usual type of biography / memoir. It is more her feelings with a few antecdotes dispersed within. Very introspective with poetry and prose thrown in. I liked it a lot as she reminded me of Hugh Prather. But then she never was a conventional actress either.
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