GRAYS HALL — Today, five Harvard freshmen roommates breathed a collective sigh of relief upon realizing they could stop pretending they had read David Foster Wallace’s hallmark novel, Infinite Jest.

Each had a copy of the 1,000+ page behemoth prominently placed on their bookshelves, and made sure it was protruding slightly more than the other books. Confiding in each other, the five boys put their copies in storage and retrieved other IJ-related materials.