Before night falls

Before Night Falls is frustrating because there is a feeling of a greater book that could have been made from these experiences. The ones listed are so plentiful and devastating that it seems that they weren't able to get the attention they deserve.
Any paragraph has as much action and more consequences than a typical New Yorker short story. Here is a picking of the best paragraph from a random page:

And then one day a big scandal erupted at the Library. Two well-known women employees had been caught in the ladies' room making love. The women were brought before Maria Teresa who pardoned them, saying that this was none of her business and concerned only their husbands, and there was nothing for her to do. Precisely for being so generous Maria Teresa could not avoid having more and more "enemies" infiltrate the library: resentful people who could not forgive her for the fact that they owed their jobs to her. One of them was Maria Luisa Gil, who hated Maria Teresa with a passion simply because she wanted the job of director for herself. She was a Stalinist Spaniard, married to an old stalwart of the communist party. She was filled with bitterness which she covered up with apparent sweetness. Little by little those enemies started to make headway, saying Maria Teresa was a lesbian, an aristocrat, and a counterrevolutionary, and they finally managed to get her replaced. Lisandro Otero was the one to tell Maria Teresa that she had been ousted. Like a good partisan custodian and enemy of culture, he took great pleasure in firing the person who created the institution. The new director was the none other than the captain of Fidel Castro's police, Captain Sidroc Romos. Maria Teresa left the library in tears.

This could be a movie pitch. Instead it is one of a stunning series of events including avoiding gun fire, hiding in trees, beatings, robberies, prison killings, disfigurements and above all sex in proportions best described with forecasts or statistics. The number of partners certainly exceeds the book's pages but what about its commas?
This may be the only way the book could have been written- as a defiant record in the gaps between fleeing the police, avoiding informers, and another lost manuscript.
None of this is to say that this isn't a great book- it changes one's perspective. Making us aware that this was a person nearly dying* to be sexually, politically and artistically free.

*In my rereading I was surprised to see that there was a time people were dying to get to Gauntanamo.

My Google answers links

when is a brita filter done
Trading - what are the odds of making enough money to be worth it
occassional extra keyboard happenings
dell inspiron 4150 will not wake up from suspend
Places for people who love culture to live.
Connection refused for only some urls
Is it possible for muscles to go on the wrong side of bone through movement?
Getting established as a choreographer
dell inspiron 4150 will not wake up from suspend

Picking a place to live

I plan to stay in New York for some time yet but there are times when the expense, danger, lack of space...

NYC is the third worst overall for air. Also scoring near the top for lead in the air and water pollution. This is not only bad news for current asthma sufferers like myself, NYC is now at the point where one in eight children have asthma and one in four in certain parts as opposed to six percent for the general population.
Diesel fumes are responsible for 4000 deaths per year in New York State. This might have to do with the 30,000 trucks entering Manhattan each day.

Whether I will stay in the U.S. is uncertain so I've sought out information on other cities. I wasn't able to find isolated pollution reports but did find some Total Quality of Life stats which use pollution as a factor. New York makes it to 39th on the list of the world's best cities and nationally the US only makes it to thirteenth.

Note:
At one point I asked a related question using Google Answers.

An idea, perhaps wrong

Any translation of a work differs only in the degree of butchery. The work of an author is not ideas but sentences. The main exception to this seems to be names and currencies (rupees, dinars, etc.). What could be gained if these were translated as well? Naturalness, increased flow, oral and vocal consistency.
It is difficult to remember names that aren't familiar. The choice then is either to ignore it or thumb frantically backwards through the pages. The former result clearly reduces comprehension; the latter breaks the flow and reduces pleasure.
The use of names from the original language creates an illusion that translation is a straightforward process. If one word in a sentence remains in the original langauge then it may seem that it is the only one that can't be translated. Everything else was changing "bibliotechque" to "library".
Written words are a representation of their oral counterpart so in our heads do we anglicize the pronunciation of a French name (e.g. ADÃLAÏDE ) or make it the only word in the sentence with a French pronunciation. To anglicize it is clearly wrong, it is neither how the name is pronounced or a translation. Along with this is the question of what to do with the various pronunciation squiggles.
In short this suggests that Miguel, Maximillian, and Michel become Michael.

What happens to a work that concerns itself with the pronunciation of a word (e.g. Lolita)? Again this assumes that translation is more straightforward than it is. "Lolita" which seems like a natural part of the language in English will stick out badly in (I'm guessing) Swedish or Hindi. Lolita depends not just on the phonetics but the mental associations of the sound.

The case for currencies is much less strong. The narrative flow can continue with only a general understanding of the amount. Also determing a specific sum is difficult due to the fluctuating nature of currencies as well as the price variations on different types of goods due to era or region .

Cropping

This morning and last night I've been doing some painful rereading of previous posts. There were the expected grammar errors- missing words, unnecessary voice changes, and many poor connections.
More time consuming and more frustrating was the poor thinking. Paragraphs speeding up and braking instead of falling in line. Typing instead of thinking ("in the middle of the crux"). A level of pretentiousness much higher than expected.
The fix for much of the pretension was easy. Many sentences could be cut out with no loss of meaning. It reminded me a little of photography, some cropping is for effect but the "no-brainers" are the removal of flood lights and photographer feet.
The most common content changes were substituting "I" for "you" and the removal of "I"s. The "You"s caused too many voice changes and seemed too aggressive. A post about viewing art in galleries has enough problems without me telling you what you must feel when you are viewing it. Also "You"s being generic are easier to change over to "I" or eliminate.

This was a removal of the real knee-bangers. Someday I hope to learn the finer points of which is "which", which is "that".