It is indeed my opinion, but when reading your response I felt it was an appeal to authority, which is a fallacy, and as such difficult to constructively argue. I would much rather hear what your personal opinion is on Proust.

I read your linked article by Nabokov, and suffice it to say that I don't agree. And, yes, I do recall the very passages quoted in the article since I have read it before.

A good writer would have been capable of conveying the same message with the same emotion, but with sentences that does not require the reader to concentrate to the point of it being work to actually read the thing.

When reading it, I used to feel a sense of accomplishment after every few pages. That's a pretty good feeling, and if it was hard to really understand what the author wanted to say, it must be better than that simple writing by lesser authors such as Tolstoy, right? (yes, the last part was irony)

Well, arguing about literature never really leads anywhere. I'd rather argue about why Emacs is better than every other editor than talk about authors that I don't even enjoy reading.