Joseph Heller

American novelist whose Catch-22 — based on his WWII experience as a bombardier — became the defining satirical American novel of the 20th century and the source of a cultural catchphrase for paradoxical bureaucratic logic.

Created the term Catch-22 as the defining expression of the absurd no-win bureaucratic situation — in the novel, you can be grounded as insane if you're crazy, but asking to be grounded proves you're sane — making Heller the author of one of the most widely adopted phrases in the English language.