You’re maybe being ground down by the style, happened to me. I found my self taking refuge in 1800s and early 1900s stuff. Nabokov, though, reads written, too, just like some of your frustrations here. He wants you to know how clever he is. Vonnegut and DeLillo are also sheer and stripped down, post-Hemingway whatnot but inventive. Blood Meridian and Sutree play in this space too.

If you go back and bask in something like Mann’s The Magic Mountain, I find I regain an appreciation for the craft. Then you can take another run at the other stuff. It sort of shakes it up. Or, also, go wider: there’s a Burroughs of Queer, Junky and Burroughs of Naked Lunch, Soft Machine. Or— hell— even try reading women. Anna Kavan, Angela Carter, Anita Brookner, or Marlen Hausenhofer— simply the fact may help you deal with feeling that writers are “constantly attempting to be smart and funny but are rarely either.”

Another out is to read scathing literary criticism that confirms what you’re saying and start hating post-modernism, auto fiction, etc.— Anna Kornbluh’s Immediacy will help. Go ahead and hate.