Book “People at the Fair” – Eugene Weekly

Scott Landfield’s doctor told him he could live to be 100. And that’s a good thing, because the 70-year-old owner of Tsunami Books feels like he’s just getting started. Accountants and partnerswhich was released last year, is only the second publication from Tsunami Press. It is a love letter to the bookstore and a thank you to the staff and others who have contributed to its success.

“What better way to tell the story of these people,” says Landfield, “than through their own writing?”

The collection includes stories and poems from a total of 27 authors, many of whom will present their work on the Front Porch stage at the 2024 Oregon Country Fair on Saturday, July 13, as part of the fair’s Spoken Word series.

The book begins and ends with short stories by Tsunami Books co-founders David Rhodes and Landfield. Rhodes stayed with the business for 12 years before moving on to new adventures elsewhere in the world, and Landfield has been with Tsunami since it opened some 30 years ago.

The book business wasn’t Landfield’s first career. He came to Eugene in 1978 as part of the “migration,” he says, meaning the young adults who moved here from across the country in the ’60s and ’70s to find work and an alternative lifestyle. They bought land, started communities and created jobs that were more egalitarian than those found in mainstream society. Landfield found a job with a reforestation cooperative called “Hoedads” and planted trees for about 20 years.

“I planted a million trees,” he says.

When his body gave out from the strenuous physical labor, he opened the bookstore. Not one to measure success in dollar amounts, he is open about the financial difficulties he endured over the years to keep Tsunami Books afloat. Money was never a major motivating factor. In the introduction to the anthology, he describes himself as “self-made, hard-working, awkward, broke.”

When we met at the shop, we sat on “the stage,” a small wooden platform he had built with a friend. Originally, it was just for himself. He built it to have a place to sit and write. Once upon a time, his ambition was to become a novelist and also to start an independent publishing company. But in the beginning, running the shop took up all his time, and the stage became a place around which the community gathered.

Thousands of events have taken place in the store, he says, including writing group workshops, poetry slams, musical performances and “even a wedding.”

Landfield’s work in Accountants and partners is his first published work of creative fiction, and it probably wouldn’t have happened if Steve Ellerhoff hadn’t come to the shop to work there.

In 2020, the first year of the pandemic, Ellerhoff lost not one but two jobs. One was as a tutor at Lane Community College and the other was working in receiving and unloading boxes at Barnes & Noble. Getting a full-time job as an accountant at Tsunami Books, he says, “was a huge stroke of luck.”

It was also a hit for Landfield.

After telling his new collaborator that he would like to publish the memoirs of local literary star Ken Babbs, Ellerhoff guided him through the process. With his background as a published scholar and editor and a PhD from the School of English at Trinity College Dublin, Ellerhoff helped Landfield establish Tsunami Press.

The publisher’s first publication in 2022 was Babbs’ book Cronies, a burlesque: adventures with Ken Kesey, Neal Cassady, the Merry Pranksters and the Grateful Dead.

Babbs’ short story in the new anthology is about life on the farm and caring for animals, while Ellerhoff, the volume’s co-editor, tells a story from the animals’ perspective. Ellerhoff will not go to the fair. He doesn’t mind because someone has to stay behind and “mind the place.”

It should come as no surprise that people who like to read also like to write. But Ellerhoff, who studied in Ireland, notes a cultural difference: “book people” in Ireland are open about their writing, while Americans shy away from revealing this aspect of their personality.

That difference could change if the Oregon Country Fair is any indicator. Landfield says the fair has never had as many literary events as it will in 2024, and he’s encouraged by the increased interest.

He is also looking forward to publishing more. Among the projects on his wish list for future books is one by Emily Poole. She is another salesperson at the store with a bundle of talent. She is both an artist and a writer and donated the cover art for Booksellers and partnersand she did the illustration for this year’s Oregon Country Fair poster.

The Writers and Artists of Tsunami Press — Saturday, July 13, 1:30 p.m., on the Front Porch stage — is one of many spoken word performances at the Oregon Country Fair. You can find them all at OregonCountryFair.org.

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