Reading pages v reading a novel

I keep touching on the same themes as I read through James Salter's 1975 novel, "Light Years," but it keeps striking me that this is the classic example of a "writer's writer," for better or for worse. I'm completely blown away by the beauty of some of his descriptive passages and by Salter's ability, in a few deft word-strokes, to evoke a scene - and it's not as if this novel is full of long, meandering descriptions as in Proust - Salter's are much more compact, Proustian detail conveyed with Hemingwayesque efficiency: short sentences built on the solid foundation of nouns and verbs. he is also great at conveying an action or an interaction: lots of the chapters or passages in the book are accounts of a dinner or dinner party, and there are some terrifically memorable action scenes as well, such as a character (Arnaud) get jumped and beaten on a NYC street far too late during a rough time in city life. All that said: what's the end game here? The problem is that the scenes do not cohere particularly well, characters introduced and then dropped, actions not developed or followed through. The book takes place over a fairly long period of time and I suppose the structure, such as it is, is that we see the characters evolving through snapshots of their lives at different stages - some like Mrs. Bridge, but far more lyrical and sensual. This style is not designed to win a wide readership, in fact it's rather off-putting - especially in that the two central characters are not particularly likable or sympathetic - or even, for most readers, recognizable. So I find myself admiring Salter's work greatly page by page and wishing the pages would cohere into a better novel. As it is, this is a page stopper, that is, a writer's book.