The internet is so much a part of my life both at work and at home that I forget there are some people in the Western world who still manage very well without it — including writers. Among them is the Spanish novelist Javier Marías, who still writes everything on a typewriter. Being out of Madrid recently, in a typewriterless place, he was forced to use a computer, and took the opportunity to surf the net. Thus he saw, for the first time, a website bearing his name, created 10 years ago by a reader to whom, he says, “I seem to owe more than I can ever repay.”
He is less impressed by blogs and forums. In an article published in El País in December, he says:

I cannot understand why some writers have their own blogs and must, in consequence, spend time on them. It is like going into a bar, sitting down at a table and talking, and then anyone who likes can come up to you and unload his thoughts over you or, more usually, his verbal abuse. Or like having a phone conversation in which simply anyone can join in and opine, or heap abuse upon you…
There is little reasoned argument — most of it is more like name-calling in a tavern. There seem to be so many people out there oozing hatred, bitterness and resentment. Not so much in English-language blogs, I find, where there tends to be a more civilised discussion or exchange of information. But the Spanish blogs are a realm of rage, of individuals who think everything is shit, or who devote hours and hours to the study of a writer only to badmouth him, when the most sensible course would seem that of not reading him at all. In this realm you also re-encounter people whom you ceased to see years ago, only to find that time has not made them any wiser, that their taste for vituperation has grown on them with age, and that their obsessions are the same. My peek into this smoky tavern has left me with no desire for further visits.