Carolyn Cassady - Later Life

Later Life

Carolyn worked at a local newspaper and for radiologists, and she also extended her theater activities. In 1970, Doubleday commissioned her to write her memoirs of her life with Neal and Jack. However, she was unable to secure permission to print Kerouac's letters, and the book was temporarily shelved. Published in 1976, her memoir Heart Beat: My Life with Jack and Neal was later made into the movie Heart Beat starring Sissy Spacek as Carolyn.

Carolyn was a founding member of the Academy of Parapsychology and Medicine (APM) and during the early 1970s served for four years as their correspondence secretary. In that capacity, she met many in the occult and medical world, including Uri Geller, Andrija Puharich, the Findhorn people and astronaut Edgar Mitchell, who started an institution much like APM after he'd seen Earth as a blue jewel. She also became acquainted with eminent astrologer Dane Rudhyar, and she corresponded with one of the Russian scientists behind the book Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain. When APM closed, she served as office manager for a company that imported bamboo stakes from China to stock American nurseries.

After all three children had married and left home, Carolyn longed for more cultural life than was available in the San Francisco suburbs. Her ancestors were all buried in England, and she had been brought up with many English customs, so in 1983, she moved to England. With London as her home base, she traveled extensively in Europe, Scandinavia and the Soviet Union, making many friends. In 1990, her memoirs were finally published in London as Off the Road: Twenty Years with Cassady, Kerouac and Ginsberg. Carolyn participated in the 2011 documentary film Love Always, Carolyn in which she claims she is fighting a losing battle for the truth about Neal Cassady and Kerouac. She currently makes her home in the country near Bracknell, about an hour outside London.