What to make of Proust's wit

Pausing in reading Proust's "Swann's Way" (Davis tr.) thanks to Red Sox tix last night, I've been thinking about Proust's wit - many may be surprised that Recherche is at times a very funny book, but it's not so because of broad comic situations or extreme and eccentric characters and behavior a la so many other comic novels, from Cervantes through Joyce and Svevo through John Kennedy Toole - it's a highly polished verbal wit that's so subtle that at times the characters themselves don't get it - as when, early in Swann's Way the great-aunts are trying to thank Swann for a gift of a case of wine but they don't want to be gauche so they thank him in such awkward and indirect ways - Some people have nice neighbors! - that nobody's sure if Swann heard or understood, yet the sisters are delighted with (and competitive with) each other's bon mots. Or, as I recall, late in the novel, one old guy goes on for pages about the railroad schedule (a big theme in Proust, for some reason) and later another old guy says to P. something like, Oh, did you get him to talk about railroads? Proust is willing to put us through pages of intentional tedium to get the payoff of a small quip. These are throughout the novel, and characters become identified by the sharpness of their wit and their type of wit - is it P's grandfather who says early on something like: Often, but only a little bit at a time? - and this becomes a bit of a family joke. Like so much else in Proust, the wit is slightly elusive, just beyond our mental grasp, but colors the whole tone of the novel(s).