Will Patton, left, and Denis Johnson.

“I’m here to sell books. That’s why I came,” Denis Johnson informed the audience after reading from his recently released book of plays, Soul of a Whore and Purvis: Two Plays in Verse, at BAM Thursday night. Despite this early disclaimer, Mr. Johnson appeared to thoroughly enjoy performing.

The crowd was about what we would have expected for an event series entitled “Eat, Drink & Be Literary” with a $50 ticket price—a mix of sweet-looking bespectacled couples with haphazardly tucked button downs and more seasoned residents of Park Slope who dressed in summer whites and chewed slowly. Not, in other words, stereotypical Denis Johnson fans.

“Is Denis Johnson crazy?” one woman asked her companions prior to the reading. “His characters are crazy,” a grey-haired woman replied wisely.

Another aging woman informed The Observer, “This is the best way to meet people. It’s much better than being a piece of meat at a bar.”  

After a buffet dinner, Mr. Johnson, sporting navy blue socks with rugged sandals, was joined on stage by actor Will Patton—who appeared in the 1999 movie Jesus’ Son, based on Mr. Johnson’s story collection with the same name—to read a scene from Purvis. “It’s a job interview,” Mr. Johnson explained. “So we’re both wearing business clothes—like he is,” pointing to Mr. Patton, who was wearing a grey suit with suede boots, his long hair pulled back into a low bun.

“He’s much better than the readers we usually get,” New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman said of Mr. Patton when she took the stage for to moderate the conversation with Mr. Johnson that followed the reading.

Mr. Johnson explained that his plays are written in “blankish” verse. “Do you find that the audiences know that the plays are written in verse?” Ms. Treisman inquired.

“No,” Mr. Johnson responded, sighing. “I once heard someone say of another play in verse of mine, ‘It’s very good, but why does he have to make every line sound like the last line he’s ever going to write?’” he recounted, laughing.

Ms. Treisman went on to ask about Mr. Johnson’s favorite genres. “You write everything,” she remarked. “Poems, stories, novels, plays, essays, journalism—is there anything you won’t write?

Mr. Johnson hardly had to think about it. “Well, I won’t write you a check.”

“I like plays the best,” he continued. “I don’t have to do all those paragraphs. People just figure out all the stuff that goes on in the paragraphs.”

“Novels are just hard. No one can really write a good novel. How many people have written two or three good novels? Not a lot of people. It’s just a sloppy form.”

The audience seemed slightly put off by this remark, considering that Mr. Johnson has written what many consider to be some very good novels—his 2007 novel Tree of Smoke won the National Book Award and was a finalist for a Pulitzer. Yet, on Thursday night Johnson said of the book, “It shouldn’t have been published. I mean, really, definitely shouldn’t have been published. It was a personal thing. But I can’t just do personal things like that and not get paid,” drawing laughs from the audience.

Ms. Treisman asked Johnson about Jesus’ Son, noting that she’s encountered several writers who have wanted to read stories from that book for her New Yorker fiction podcast. “Why do you think it hit such a nerve with people?” she asked.

“It was the voice. It’s just really cool,” Mr. Johnson mused, before quickly confessing: “It’s just a rip off. Jeez, I can’t even remember his name…Isaac Babel. Read Red Calvary, and you’ll see where I ripped that off from. All I do is imitate people.”

Repeating a familiar refrain, Mr. Johnson explained that when he first wrote the stories now published as Jesus’ Son, he never thought they’d see the light of day.

“I was talking about banging needles in my arms,” he explained. “But then I was broke at one point, and I just thought, who cares what I did.” Desperate for money, Mr. Johnson submitted the stories to the New Yorker.

At the end of the night, Mr. Johnson took questions from the audience. “Why the executions?” one woman inquired.

“The executions,” Mr. Johnson responded, seeming somewhat taken aback. The woman repeated her question.

“Goddamn these questions,” Mr. Johnson exclaimed, putting on a mock inquisitive voice: “Why the drugs?”