work of ernest hemingway? >> i like to look at his contribution to american literature overall. he agree with john he's our most important writer largely for his contribution to style. he changed way americans write forever. and i think he's probably the best short-story writer in the english language. his co con prib diewtion to the short story is remarkable. i also think he is very special for projecting american lit you are to really around the world. >> before you answer, i wanted to let people hear about the course you are teaching because i would love to take it. i don't think i can go back in time to be with your students, but tell our audience about it. >> i teach at the women yams maratime museum in connecticut. i teach in the context of the literature of the sea. my students have an opportunity to read his work after for

instance reading mellville and also after doing things like sailing a schooner from key west to cuba. >> when will they take that trip? >> they have taken it already in january and in just a week or two, they will be reading old man ad the sea as their final work. >> the importance of hemingway, as we close? >> i think his importance is that his art transcends the time in which he lived and worked and speaks to all of us forever. and his works do that because he dared to try to create, through words, an emotional truth. he was one of the first writers to really do that and he recognized that you had the raft that, that the way you style the writing mattered. he was a craftsman in the style completely and he recognized that what you did leave out was more important than what you put in in terms of making people

feel something more than they understood it. and i think he is a sou supremay writer for both men and women of the 20th and 21st century thanks for both of you. thanks for your time. speaking of hemingway and his love of the sea, we are going to close our program by showing you some more film footage of hemingway on the ocean right outside of where we are right now, right off of key west on board his beloved boat "the pilar." ♪