He was one of my favorite novelists, a person who wrote bracingly honest books about being male, being American, being human. Now El Fotografo walks into my office and tells me John Updike is dead. Of lung cancer. I had no idea he smoked. The obituaries are appearing now online, and I’ve snagged one below from Reuters. I feel sad. I thought he had at least another 10 years of writing in him. Updike became part of my life at around age 20, when I plunged into the Rabbit series for the first time. I was an Updike junkie from the word Go. It was his powers of observation that…