Great literary art mirrors the ambiguity in real life, between the real and fiction, the moral and immoral, the ethical and unethical. Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors mirrors this ambiguity; Peter Bogdanovich's Paper Moon mirrors this ambiguity. Was it more ethical for Paper Moon to have Moses Pray involve Addie Loggins in his criminality than to "abandon" her to her aunt? Was taking her along at the end more loving? I wonder if Bogdanovich gave up Sargent's schmaltzy "embrace" ending for his own squeamishness at that "feel good" ending. Would that have "really" felt good? Do we, the audience, "really" feel better with Bogdanovich's movie ending of the two of them driving off into the distance of the Kansas plains to continue their lives of petty criminality, happy ever after? How do those things always turn out in "real" life? Addie had already survived one shootout with the police. Did Bogdanovich have moral qualms over child exploitation in the scene he excised, of the sheriff asking Addie if she had the money hidden in her panties? Or was that the censors? No, I bet that Bogdanovich felt squeamish about that scene.

Great literary art forces all, creator, actors, audience, to confront moral choices. They make you think in addition to make you feel. The mirror reflects the more accurately when the artistic creator inserts real people in their real lives into the work. Allen does that in every film; in Crimes and Misdemeanors he inserted little Dylan Farrow. He inserts himself. Mia Farrow. Bogdanovich did this in a double heaping with Ryan O'Neal and Tatum O'Neal playing themselves and the characters in the book Addie Pray. Blurring the lines between real and art makes clear that the ethical lines that we as real people confront every day are blurred. Paper Moon is great literary art.