One can certainly do without Ulysses haha. As far as Joyce goes I stick with the dead and portrait of the artist. Eggers is very much influenced by and in the same vein as Wallace, the kind of how-do-we-return-a-modicum-of-sincerity-to-this-whole-thing-after-postmodernism vibe. Eggers wrote the introduction to the copy of IJ I have. And I think Wallace has one of his very few blurbs on the copy of heartbreaking work that I have. Both writers who are really partaking in what Eliot would call “raids on the inarticulate” (which I always wish was raids on the inarticulable) - trying to get to the proverbial nitty gritty of being human, being vulnerable, being alive in an unforgiving environment, and shining a light through it.