ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, April 8, 1997 TAG: 9704080069
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW YORK
SOURCE: BETH J. HARPAZ ASSOCIATED PRESS
Wynton Marsalis won the Pulitzer Prize for music Monday and Frank McCourt took the prize for biography with ``Angela's Ashes: A Memoir,'' the story of his childhood in the slums of Limerick, Ireland.
Marsalis, a trumpet player with eight Grammys, won for ``Blood on the Fields,'' an epic, three-hour oratorio that tells the story of blacks in America through poems and songs.
He is the first jazz artist to win a Pulitzer.
``I'm appreciative. I'm happy,'' Marsalis said from his New York City apartment. ``I think it's another sign that our music is important.''
The Pulitzer for fiction went to Steven Millhauser for ``Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer.''
There was no award given for drama. Pulitzers administrator Seymour Topping said the jury considered three finalists but ``the board felt none of the three fulfilled the criteria for a Pulitzer.''
McCourt, 66, popped the cork on a bottle of champagne with his wife, Ellen, in a Cambridge, Mass., hotel room.
``This is an ecstatic moment,'' he said. ``I don't know if there's anything higher.''
Jack N. Rakove, a Stanford University professor, won a Pulitzer in the history category for ``Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution.''
The poetry award went to Lisel Mueller for ``Alive Together: New and Selected Poems.'' Mueller, 73, a German immigrant, also won the National Book Award for poetry. The Lake Forest, Ill., resident has written seven books of poems.
``It's a total surprise,'' Mueller said. ``It comes totally out of the blue.''
Richard Kluger received a Pulitzer in general nonfiction for ``Ashes to Ashes: America's Hundred-Year Cigarette War, the Public Health, and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris.''
It was Kluger's second non-fiction book. Kluger, a former staffer at The Wall Street Journal, has written six novels.
The drama finalists were: ``The Last Night of Ballyhoo'' by previous Pulitzer winner Alfred Uhry; ``Pride's Crossing'' by Tina Howe; and ``Collected Stories'' by Donald Margulies.
McCourt spent most of his adult life teaching in New York City's public high schools.
``Twenty-seven years of teaching, you want some recognition,'' he said a few hours before the prize was announced. ``Twenty-seven years. ... Nobody paid me a scrap of attention. And you write one book, boom, you're in the public eye.''
McCourt's winner tells of growing up poor and hungry in Limerick. The book made him a literary sensation almost as soon as Scribner published it last summer. ``Angela's Ashes'' spent 30 weeks on The New York Times best-seller list.
He said his late mother, for whom the book is named, wouldn't have liked it.
``It was too revealing,'' McCourt said. ``She was ashamed of our past. ... Her way of expressing her emotions would have been to cry.''
His father, a loving man whose alcoholism nearly ruined his family, might have felt differently: ``He would have said, `Och, aye, that's good.'''
McCourt was born in Brooklyn but moved to Ireland with his family during the Depression.
LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshots) Marsalis, McCourtby CNB