Reading Proust and Nabokov

Hello. I've been trying to read authors like Proust and Nabokov because I want to be a better writer than hackfrauds like Dan Simmons (who'd also read them), but I don't know if I'm engaging with them right, how to make time for them or where I should go from here on my literary journey towards becoming a better reader and hopefully a half-competent writer of prose fiction.

What should I do?

From my understanding of Proust, his work isn't straightforwardly "thematic" the way someone like Dostoevsky's might be, less focused on a cohesive statement than on simply being there and understanding a moment, place and sensation, especially when they relate to memory, rendering In Search of Lost Time as essentially a phenomenological novel, maybe the phenomenological novel.

Nabokov I've only read his Lolita, a fascinating look at sexual assault and the pervasive ugly violence that underpins middle-class urban and suburban living in regions like the US both then and today, but that doesn't give me a full understanding of the man.