Am reading Joseph Heller's Closing Time:

Another prick in the White House? It would not be the first time. Another oil tanker had broken up. There was radiation. Garbage. Pesticides, toxic waste, and free enterprise. There were enemies of abortion who wished to inflict the death penalty on everyone who was not pro-life. There was mediocrity in government, and self-interest too. There was trouble in Israel. These were not mere delusions. He was not making them up. Soon they would be cloning human embryos for sale, fun, and replacement parts. Men earned millions producing nothing more substantial than changes in ownership. The cold war was over and there was still no peace on earth. Nothing made sense and neither did everything else. People did things without knowing why and then tried to find out.

I love Catch-22. Heller managed to capture the real absurdity of how people become enslaved to invisible systems, distant bureaucracies and obscure instructions. Organisations that were set up to serve people suddenly become winding traps for the unwary or more accurately, the unthinking.

Closing Time is just as wicked, if not better. It's amazing how much of it is still relevant, considering that it's almost 10 years old.