Aspects of a great novel: growth of character

As I've noted in some previous posts, the truly eccentric and outsider characters tend to turn up in short stories rather than in novels. Stories, being in general confined to a single isolated incident, mood, or unit of time, are more hospitable to a character with few social connections or with a single fixed idea. Over the course of a novel, such characters become tiresome and thin - unless the obsession or the eccentricity is to an extremely heightened degree. Italo Svevo's Confessions of Zeno is one of those rare novels narrated by an extremely obsessive character. Readers react strongly to Svevo, and for some, such as friend WS, he's intolerable and dull as a companion and guide over the course of a 400-page novel that focuses on essentially five episodes of Zeno's life (albeit, truly epochal episodes: death of his father, courtship and marriage, "first" mistress, "last cigarette," etc.). For others, Zeno's eccentricity and humor, always at his own expense, lift this novel up to stand among the great modernists: a excellent example of fiction as providing us with access to the consciousness of another. I'm uncertain where I stand, half-way through this reading, my first return to Confessions since college. I find the Wife and Mistress section deeply sorrowful, as Zeno, an affable and generally kind man, seems completely delusional about his relationship with the very needy Carla, completely unaware that he stands in such a position of power over her, that she is needy and impoverished and essentially prostituting herself to him in order to survive, whether he can see this or not. Let's assume and hope that Svevo can see this - that he means this chapter to be sad and disturbing, despite Zeno's sanguine attitude  - his only worry being his fear of being found out by his wife, Augusta. What will lift this book higher in my view will be whether and how Zeno comes to realize his crudeness and fallibility In a great novel, the protagonist will learn, grow, evolve, complete or at least begin a journey, moving from innocence to experience (not necessary and often not possible in a great story). If Zeno remains unchanged by the end of the book, I'll be closer to the view of WS, that this novel is tedious and solipsistic. Let's hope not.