Jonathan Franzen finds himself in an odd place. He's struggling to "find things to worry about."

His new novel, "Freedom," has already been labeled "a masterpiece" and a formidable "modern classic." It's climbing best-seller lists — even though it doesn't go on sale until Tuesday.

Time Magazine put a picture of Franzen, self-conscious and serious, on its cover over the label "Great American Novelist." Inside was a long, appreciative profile he wishes his father could have seen.

The novel was this fall's leading book title even before President Barack Obama snagged an advance copy on Martha's Vineyard.

"When I got word that he had an advance copy of the book, I was genuinely excited," Franzen said in a telephone interview last week from his summer home in Santa Cruz, Calif.

"He's the first president younger than me, and he's the first president in my lifetime I've been wholeheartedly behind. So it means a lot."

Do any of the accolades make the former Webster Groves High School student blush?

After a pause, Franzen deadpans, "I should probably say yes." As a writer, he acknowledges alternating between a "wildly inflated opinion" and "unrealistically bleak view" of his work.

"To the extent that (the positive media) provides evidence that people are really enjoying the book, I'm really happy about it," he says. "I really don't write for critics. I write to make novels that people will enjoy reading. I try to be a purveyor of pleasure."

Yet, at age 51 and nine years after a media-stoked dust-up with Oprah Winfrey, followed by a public flaying over his public honesty and some of his discomforting personal essays, Franzen is well-acquainted with the vagaries of the media.

"I'm sure there will be some sort of backlash," he says drily. (Just last week, author Jennifer Weiner, frustrated over the coverage Franzen has received, lobbied Twitter followers to put together a non-Franzen book list.)

Like his previous big novel, "The Corrections," "Freedom" is a tragic-comic story of a contemporary Midwestern family. Set in St. Paul, Minn., the novel's handsome Berglunds are consumed by home renovation, conscientious lifestyles and good education, their personal tensions and betrayals played out against the backdrop of the Iraq War, overpopulation and endangered songbirds.

Franzen holds together a complex, intimate and funny portrait of a family whose father becomes a curious kind of environmental activist (somehow believing that harsh mountaintop mining will help create a bird refuge). In the way of sprawling, extended families everywhere, members include a wide range of characters: do-gooders, annoying artists, lustful college students, unrepentant alcoholics, self-interested liberal politicians and kid-multiplying Orthodox Jews.

Despite these imperfect characters, some reviews have suggested that "Freedom" has more of a sense of hope or grace than "The Corrections," whose St. Louis-like setting was named after the saint of lost causes, St. Jude.

Franzen thinks the difference may be kindness.

"I always wanted to be funny, but trying to be kind as well has become more important," he says.

He attributes the difference to his 'spouse equivalent," writer Kathryn Chetkovich, who illustrates the virtues of kindness.

"It's not like I didn't get lessons in kindness from my parents, but they were my parents," Franzen says.

While in St. Louis for Sept. 20 appearance, Franzen will visit some old friends whom he knew while growing up in Webster Woods. Born in Chicago to Earl and Irene Franzen, he moved to St. Louis in 1965 and attended the "First Congo" — the First Congregational Church of Webster Groves. He liked acting in high school and says that speaking to crowds during a big U.S. book tour, followed by an overseas tour, may be exhausting, but not nerve-wracking.

If possible, he'll devote some time to bird-watching, a passion that may be the only thing that competes with writing for his attention (although he admits to a longstanding guilty pleasure, TV's "Law & Order," and a newer show, "Breaking Bad.")

While in St. Louis, Franzen hopes to look for a Henslow's sparrow with a friend, a Washington University student he met while in China. The author's life list of American birds is at 630 and, yes, he knows about his hometown's birding legend Phoebe Snetsinger, whose daughter Penny was in his class in high school.

But the characters and story in "Freedom," which dips into the fuzzy line between pure freedom and irresponsibility, is wholly fiction, Franzen says.

In fact, he declines to speak about what freedom means to him, saying readers can hash out the theme for themselves.

Franzen is not even a fan of the term "great American novel," which often denotes the novel as a medium for coming to terms with the country as a whole.

"That's not particularly my ambition," he says. "I'm more and more interested in going inside character. But so much of what is inside me is a product of what's outside, that the novels end up encompassing some of what's going on in the country."

JONATHAN FRANZEN

When • 7 p.m. Sept. 20

Where • St. Louis Public Library's Schlafly branch, 225 North Euclid Avenue

How much • Free

More info • 314-367-6731; left-bank.com. To see our review of "Freedom," visit stltoday.com/books.