We have now seen numerous instances of Modiano at his most subversive. The apparently unremarkable first-person narrator, chronological narrative and realist representation have all turned out to be playful subversions of these familiar narrative tropes. So too has his use of historical facts: far from adding up to a historical novel, they result in an uneasy mixture of fact and fiction which has a morally disturbing effect on the reader. This leads us to a question of classification. Modiano's novels are not what they seem, so we know what they are not: but what exactly are they? To what subgenre of novel, if any, do Modiano's works belong?

One way in which we can try to classify Modiano's novels is to see whether they resemble any particular subgenre, and then to decide on the nature of the resemblance: is it parody, pastiche, or simple imitation? As several critics have noted, parody is one of the central characteristics of Modiano's first novel, La Place de l’étoile. Colin Nettelbeck and Penelope Hueston have shown how La Place de l’étoile contains extensive parodies of Céline and Proust, as well as of ‘le picaresque voltairien’: Françoise Dhénain, discussing the same work, has noted its parody ‘du style pamphlétaire célinien’. This novel is indeed full of intertextual references to other novels and authors: it contains parodies, but also pastiches, caricatures, and straightforward references. However, I will not be discussing these in this chapter for two reasons. First, this abundance of intertextual exercises is unique to La Place de l’étoile. This suggests that rather than being a constant of his style, it is the result of a cathartic exercise typical of a first novel, and therefore not pertinent to a consideration of his oeuvre as a whole.

Second, the intertextualities have a realist origin in the kaleidoscopic vision of Raphaël Schlemilovitch, the colourful hero and narrator of La Place de l’étoile, and are therefore best considered within the confines of this novel.