Wulf
Wulf Zendik
1920-1999
Zendik had come to Paris with a French dancer/lover, very much under the influence of Henry Miller. Miller had left everything in the United States to be a writer in Paris and he was an inspiration for Wulf to do the same. Wulf called Miller his early mentor and on one of his trips back to the U.S. he smuggled in Miller's books. The books were, at the time, banned in the U.S. Wulf wrote about it in Quest with humor, how he filled all his pockets with Miller's work and was terrified customs would jail him for breaking the law.
 
After his affair had ended, Wulf moved to the Left Bank. The Left Bank was the heart of the Beat Movement-and it was there that he met a junkie/poetess who would soon become his lover. She introduced Wulf to Allen Ginsberg--newly famous as the author of Howl--and the lesser-known but talented poet, Gregory Corso. Before long, he was drinking and drugging with them, befriending Corso and arguing heatedly with Ginsberg. Wulf also grew close to the eccentric artist and dancer, Vali Myers, whose flamboyant style became an emblem of the era.
 
Within that circle of artists, Wulf read chapters from Quest aloud, and his work earned him a reputation as a talented artist. He was eventually invited to a writers' salon hosted by diarist Anais Nin. He showed Nin the working manuscript of Quest, and she enthusiastically passed it on to Henry Miller's Paris publishers. They, in turn, gave it to the literary agent of the novelist W. Somerset Maugham to handle the book. From each of them, the verdict was the same: Quest was outstanding, but it would be almost impossible to market an autobiographical work from an unknown author. Instead, they suggested that he write a novel, which would be much easier to sell to publishers--after which Quest could be published.
 
The Beat Generation emerged mainly from New York and San Francisco, and the existential hotbed was in Paris. The Beats reflected the nihilism of the Existentialsits. Wulf was from Los Angeles, a culture of movies, fast cars, screenwriters, hookers, musicians, actors, actresses, directors--a popculture with everyone out to get famous, to make it. This background made Wulf unique as a Beat writer. His background gave him a distinct perspective on the Beat and American scene. When he arrived in Paris in 1958, he was already hard at work on the Quest manuscript, and he felt, as he said, "like a man from the future." He felt the same with the other Beat artists he was involved with.
 
The pain and poverty and going nowhere, nothing-means-anything life in Paris had gotten to him--he needed the sun, he said, and a life of aliveness and hope. He moved to Spain and began work on the novel Zendik, a 900-page epic that would take him nine years to complete. During that time, he returned to L.A. and put Quest on the shelves, never submitting it for publication again. His long-term plan was to return to Europe, but in 1961, he met Arol, who became his life partner, and in 1969 the two of them founded Zendik Farm. After Wulf's death in 1999, a Quest Among The Bewildered was published by Zendik Arts.