At least three Jews were today among the 1967 winners of the coveted Pulitzer Prize, They are Bernard Malamud, winner of the award in fiction; Justin Kaplan, cited for his biography of Mark Twain; and Leon Kirehner, professor of music at Harvard University.
Mr. Malamud, whose prize was for his last novel, “The Fixer,” also has written three other novels and two books of short stories. ‘The Fixer” parallels the story of Mendel Beilis, a Russian Jew, who was arrested and tried in Kiev on a trumped-up charge of ritual murder. Beilis was ultimately acquitted after world-wide pressures. Mr. Malamud previously won an award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, two National Book Awards, a Partisan Review fellowship and a Rockefeller grant. Born in Brooklyn, and educated in New York. Mr. Malamud is 53 years old.
Mr. Kaplan, born in New York of a Russian-born Jewish immigrant father, is 41. He received his early education in New York, did graduate work at Harvard, and worked as a freelance writer and as editor for a big New York publishing firm before he started work in 1959 on the book which won the latest prize for him, “Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain.”
Mr. Kirchner was also born in New York. He studied composition with Arnold Schoenberg, Ernest Bloch and Roger Sessions. His prize was for the composition of a quartet for strings with an electronic extension through the use of a tape recorder. He is a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the National Academy of Arts and Sciences, and previously won other awards, including the Naumburg Award in 1954. He is 48.
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