In 'Timothy,' a tortoise takes on society

Timothy; or, Notes of an Abject Reptile
By Verlyn Klinkenborg
Alfred A. Knopf, 192 pp., $16.95

There has been no shortage of writers in recent years who have lamented Western culture's treatment of nature over the last few centuries, so many writers that it has been difficult for any one of them to resonate. Verlyn Klinkenborg has found a way, thanks to a tortoise.

In the wry and charming novel ''Timothy; or, Notes of an Abject Reptile," Klinkenborg -- a member of The New York Times editorial board who writes ''The Rural Life" for the paper and has authored three books -- takes up the life and times of Timothy, a real tortoise who roamed the garden of Gilbert White. The 18th-century English naturalist and curate documented his observations of wildlife, including Timothy, in his classic 1789 book, ''Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne."

White is generally regarded as England's first ecologist. But as Klinkenborg notes, gender identification was evidently not the curate's forte, as Timothy was actually female. In the novel, she tells of her encounters with the naturalist and his fellow ''great soft tottering beasts" of the human race as they cross paths in the garden.

And with an eye that misses nothing, Timothy comments on human vanities and hypocrisies from couture to sexuality. ''An agility matched only by their haste," she says of the latter.

Thus, the observed becomes the observer, issuing a sometimes bitter, sometimes poignant, sometimes hilarious critique of the relationship between humanity and nature in the Enlightenment, the summit of Western hubris. ''My voice would shatter his human solitude," Timothy says, mulling whether to speak when spoken to and upend humanity's anthropocentric assumptions about nature. ''The happiness of his breed depends upon it. The world is theirs to arrange. So they tell themselves. A word or two from me -- 'Now, then' -- and they have all that arranging to do over again."

Such hubris persists to this day, and to many environmentalists is just as problematic. What makes Klinkenborg's foray unusual is that it has come in a novel rather than a think-tank policy paper, conservation group report, or media expose. It is marvelously entertaining, imagining how a tortoise might have seen English culture at the time. And as cultural commentary, it is as pertinent to understanding our world as White's more than two centuries ago.

''Yet they cannot quiet their human-ness," Timothy says, his voice as attenuated as his movement. ''Humility never comes naturally to their meditations. Pride of the vertical. Assurance of those who wear hair, even if not their own. Pomp of warm-bloodedness. An equilibrium they mistake for rationality. Over-certainty about their station in life."

In what may be the greatest irony in a novel rich with them, Klinkenborg has turned to a moment in our cultural history so averse to nature, and found in that moment a way to affirm nature, simply by giving it a voice. In the din of our times, that may be one voice worth listening to.