In search of lost self: Missing Person

Started Patrick Modiano's Missing Person (the original French was something like Rue des Boutiques - English title is better), and at first thought it was an homage to Paul Auster, extremely popular in France, but then noted that Modiano is a bit older than Auster and probably publishing earlier, this orginally published in 1978, so maybe the homage is the other way around. Missing Person is also an obvious homage to the American noir detective tradition: begins with a younger detective being let go by his boss, owner of the detective agency, who abuptly announces he is retiring and closing shop; they go out for a drink in a cafe and we learn that the sr. private eye hire the younger guy, whom he calls Guy (nice anglo-franc pun there) after taking him on as a client: Guy had lost his memory, hired the detective to find out who he was/is, unsuccessful, but he got an 8-year job out of it. Now, as his ex-boss heads off into the night w/ his few belongings, Guy says he will try to discover his past (this is a very French mocking nod to Proust of course). Then follow a series of improbabilities, which we're clearly not meant to take literally: Guy finds an old pal, a waiter, who says he seems to recognize him as someone who hung out w/ a Russian emigre, whom Guy tracks down and who then gives Guy some photos of other emigres, including a beautiful and mysterious girl ... and so forth. This is a sequential novel rather than a novel w/ a true arc, and it has a dreamlike quality of course - one odd event following another, people behaving oddly - the emigre weirdly invites Guy into his flat, and asks him to sit next to him on the bed while looking at the photos - w/out a hint of self-consciousness, takes him to a restaurant and order for him - an odd meal, boiled herring I think. So is this a novel w/ deep meaning - that for all of us, maybe writers especially, our lives are self-conscious constructs and most of our waking life, or consciousness, is an attempt to find out (and to express) who we are? Or is it just a toss-off, an off-key detective story about a private eye in search of his most elusive client, himself? (I believe Modiano won a Nobel for lit - something Hammet, Chandler, let alone Proust, never did).