Advertisements for Jonathan Lethem

Jonathan Lethem’s fat, hip and garrulous new essay collection, “The Ecstasy of Influence,” is self-consciously in the tradition of books like Norman Mailer’s “Advertisements for Myself” and John Updike’s “Hugging the Shore,” brilliant grab-bag volumes that blended criticism, journalism and introspection. So it makes a kind of sense that Mr. Lethem debated, he tells us, calling this book either “Advertisements for Norman Mailer” or, even better, “Shugging the Whore.”