Context

I have never been able to understand how you manage, on the one hand, to study butterflies from the point of view of their habitat and, on the other, to pretend that it is possible to write about human beings and leave out of account all question of society and environment. I have come to the conclusion that you simply took over in your youth the fin de siècle Art for Art’s sake slogan and have never thought it out. I shall soon be sending you a book of mine which may help you to straighten out these problems.

Edmund Wilson, letter to Vladimir Nabokov of November 15, 1948 (The book to which Wilson refers is The Triple Thinkers.)