Proust on the train

I'm on the train from Wolverhampton to Glasgow and I've just finished the second volume of Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu. It's called "In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower". Our narrator is now a young adult and his feelings for various girls are explored, including his first love Gilberte, and Albertine and her little gang during the longest summer holiday I have ever heard of at Balbec! I am still enjoying Proust's flowery and detailed style, and I feel that his story is an amazingly detailed social history of a certain time and class. However I am a bit fed up of all the dreadful shallowness and snobbery exhibited by many of the characters, including the narrator. Also their incredible idleness. For example, the Baron de Charlus is not satisfied with asking one of the hotel's servants to go on a midnight errand for him; he demands that the hotel manager be woken because he prefers the top man to be the one to do his bidding. I think that Proust is being critical of these people by highlighting their behaviour, and he can be very humourous in describing it, but I find the whole book so suffused with descriptions of snobbery that I am a bit sickened with it. Our narrator is horribly fickle towards both his male friends and the girls that he meets; he longs to get close to them but once he has their attention (or even knows that he is about to get their attention!) they become swiftly devalued in his eyes and he will avoid them. And the digressions! Proust just can't stay on topic! A visit by the narrator to an artist's studio had me groaning because as soon as the narrator saw the paintings I just knew he would go into incredible detail about each one, and it was almost impossible to remember where the narrative was supposed to be going! Now I know I sound very critical of Proust, but in fact I am still enjoying reading his work! It is fascinating in its minute attention to detail. I am however going to have a good break from it now before I take on Volume 3 - maybe even until next year!
By the way the reason that I'm on the train is that I accompanied Davie on the first two parts of his journey to Aberystwyth, near where he will be doing his Practice Gold D of E expedition this week. I'm so proud of him to be willing to go on an Open Gold Expedition by himself (This is because Duncanrig will not be running Gold expeditions until next year.) I was glad that I accompanied him because one of the trains was late and we missed a connection. So we had a nice chat in the station café at Wolverhampton while David waited for the next train. The Wimbledon Men's final was on the television there and we watched the first set before we parted ways; Davie to Wales and me back towards Glasgow.