The Short Happy Ad Career of Ernest Hemingway
From Slate Magazine: 
“A new book of Hemingway arcana, Hemingway and the Mechanism of Fame: Statements, Public Letters, Introductions, Forewords, Prefaces, Blurbs, Reviews, and Endorsements (2006), demonstrates that when self-promotion is done by a marketing master, it can approximate art…and he had no problem letting that familiar visage appear in ads, for which he also wrote the 
copy. In one he promotes Ballantine Ale (while sitting in a deck chair with a book open) writing, “You have to work hard to deserve to drink it. When something has been taken out of you by strenuous exercise, Ballantine puts it back in.” There’s one for Pan American Airlines (“We started flying commercially about the same time. They did the flying. I was the passenger.”), and another for Parker 51, “The World's Most Wanted Pen,” to whose ad Hemingway lent his face and a paragraph (presumably in his handwriting) on the horrors of war.”
The man looks at the blank page. It is the first page of a short story. But there is nothing on it. The man doesn’t know what to write. He wishes he did not have to write anything at all. But he is a writer. He is paid to write stories. And he needs the money.
He needs the money to buy food and Pernod. That gives him an idea. He can go to the café and drink Pernod. This idea makes him happy.
At the café he drinks Pernod. He only drinks two Pernods because he does not have money for a third. His happiness begins to fade. He thinks about the short story he cannot write but that makes him less happy and want to drink more Pernod. But he has no more money to buy Pernod.
The man looks across the street from the café and sees a poster on the wall. It is a poster telling people to drink Pernod. Now he is no longer happy. His happiness has turned into sadness. It has turned into wretched desolation. 
And then the man looks at the poster again. He reads the words on the poster. The words say that Pernod is a drink for women. The drink is for men who are soft and weak like women. But the man drinks Pernod and he knows he is a strong man. He is a brave man. A genius of a man even after a dozen Pernods.
He is a genius of a man who now knows how to make money while the short story waits for the one true thing that the short story is destined to reveal. The man will write new words for the poster. He will write the words that tell the world and the Nobel judges why Pernod is a drink for strong brave genius men.
Now when the man looks at the poster he is happy.
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