A word I didn't know until today: Anomie

anomie / noun  lack of the usual social or ethical standards to an individual or group.

I read this word on the back of Stuart Ross's novel, Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew. The protagonist's life is described as comprised  of "childhood summers at a Central Ontario cottage, teenage anomie in a Toronto suburb, [and a] a disastrous university career..."

Interestingly, in the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, this entry appears on the opposite page of the entry for Anka, Paul Albert (b. 1941). Canadian-born singer and songwriter, famous since his teens for songs such as 'Diana', 'Puppy Love', 'Lonely Boy', and Frank Sinatra's 'My Way'.

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