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 WINS MUSIC PULITZER; FRANK MCCOURT WINS FOR BIOGRAPHY

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, McCourt


























































by CNB