“A benefit for child literacy hits home for me,” Daily Show host Jon Stewart told the sold out audience at “Revenge of the Book Eaters,” a benefit for 826NYC at the Beacon Theater Wednesday night, “because every night, before I put my son to bed, we sit down [pause] and we watch a benefit together.”

The event brought together literary lights in the McSweeney’s orbit and nerd-chic indie rockers Sufjan Stevens, David Byrne, and John Roderick to benefit 826’s child literacy centers. The night was animated by the same comic sensibility that has made the Daily Show and McSweeney’s such generation-defining successes: ironic, self-effacing, and in the know. Dave Eggers, who is the founder of 826, sold hugs for $20 a pop during the intermission, while onstage “This American Life” contributor Sarah Vowell explained to host John Hodgeman (best known as the lovably dorky PC in the Apple ads) why the audience should put more money in the buckets being passed around.

“It will be put to good use, will it not?” asked Mr. Hodgeman.

“Yes,” said Ms. Vowell.

“It will be used to teach kids to fight.”

“No, to write,” she corrected.

“Ah, to write and to fight.”

826 began humbly four years ago in San Francisco (826 Valencia was the original address) with four volunteers and a sandwich board that read: “free tutoring, walk in.” Today, it counts 1,100 tutors in San Francisco alone, as well as drop-in centers in New York City, Seattle, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Ann Harbor, Mich. Beyond the core mission — teaching creative writing to kids between the ages of 6 and 18 — the program sponsors evening bookmaking workshops, classroom visits, and assists schools in publishing student newspapers and literary magazines.

It’s hard to imagine better ambassadors for the cause of child literacy. The handcrafted packaging of McSweeney’s is enough to awaken the inner child in anyone who loves books. 826 takes the potential for fun and mystery even further, situating its drop-in centers behind quirky storefronts like the Pirate Supply Store in San Francisco, the Space Travel Supply Co. in Seattle, and the Super Hero Supply Co. in Brooklyn.

But the real secret of its success may be the consonance between message and messenger. Unlike, say, NBA players promoting literacy in the schools, 826 representatives such as Mr. Eggers and Ms. Vowell offer a powerful example of just where literature can get you.

One 826NYC student seems to have already mastered the mix of the absurd, pop-culture saturated, and naive that the hip-lit set aspires to. Mr. Eggers showed the crowd slides of story collages made by a boy named Alex featuring baby chicks pushing wheelbarrows (because farmers “are too lazy to do it”), Tom Cruise playing Beatles songs in Hollywood station, King Kong wearing bunny ears to trick unsuspecting kids, and nuptials between a gingerbread man and a peanut (“can you imagine what their kids will look like?”). With the right back story, one could imagine them drawing hefty prices at an outsider art fair.

Wednesday’s lineup highlighted the sensibility that unites the worlds of indie literature and indie rock. Mr. Stewart read a James Frey-style mea culpa from the introduction to the new paperback edition of “America the Book” (which helpfully annotates the many historical fabrications in the original hardback version). Ms. Vowell uncorked a new essay about her favorite explorer: John Fremont’s crabby cartographer Charles Preuss, who apparently “despised everything about exploration.”

What better fit for evening’s tone of quirky bookishness than the history- and place-infatuated songs of Mr. Stevens? Backed by a churning six-piece band that included xylophone, piano, drums, trumpet, trombone, and viola (plus Mr. Stevens on banjo), he sang wistful and whispery tunes about Andrew Jackson and Chicago.

A kaleidoscopic solo set by Mr. Roderick of the Seattle band the Long Winters suggested that the size of a singer’s band may be inversely proportional to the size of his personality. He likened the massive Beacon Theater stage to performing on Agamemnon’s barge (always a dream of his, he said), but with his cartoon jaw, outsize personality, and foghorn of a voice, he had no trouble filling the cavernous space.

His lyrics were a kind of hodgepodge poetry: “boys and girls in cars / dogs and birds on lawns / from here I can touch the sun / … put your jackets on / I feel we’re being born / the tropic of Capricorn is below,” he sang on “The Commander Thinks Aloud.”

The song may have been modeled on the Talking Heads’ “The Big Country,” which offers a similarly abstracted bird’s-eye view of suburban sprawl. It was among the songs performed by Mr. Byrne (whose second book will soon be published by McSweeney’s) Wednesday night. The set continued his post-Heads exploration of exotic styles with a set built around a homegrown one: country & western music.

Mr. Byrne dressed the part of a country star with suede jacket, red guitar, and single-pleat black pants setting off his white, spiked hair. In addition to the Webb Pierce classic “There Stands the Glass,” he transposed a few Talking Heads songs to country style with the help of a lapsteel guitar.

For an encore, he and Mr. Stevens sang Lefty Frizzell’s quirky classic, “Saginaw, Michigan,” about a Saginaw fisherman’s son who tricks a wealthy father into giving him his daughter’s hand. It was a ridiculous scene: Mr. Byrne crooning like a honky tonk star, while Mr. Stevens struggled to read the lyrics and sing along. It was the perfect offbeat note to a perfectly offbeat evening.