The View From the Critic's Seat WHEN critics criticize, there is light and there is friction. In my nearly two years as public editor, I've had a steady flow of reader complaints about The New York Times's many critics: never in a crescendo, always diffused across various themes, this muted chorus of discomfort swells when opinion cuts too deep. Readers sometimes just disagree with a reviewer's opinion. They recoil when a reviewer seems excessively harsh, and sometimes assign malign motives to the reviewer when it happens. Other times, they are simply confused and wonder what's up when The Times reviews a book in the Arts section and then again in the Book Review. They especially object when a critic tramples on the dignity of an artist or performer, as occasionally happens. Steve Scott, a reader from Naugatuck, Conn., was disturbed when a June 22 Arts section article derogated the artistic legacy of the recently deceased LeRoy Neiman, thinking it tantamount to "spitting on his grave." Last November, a number of readers protested a dismissive review of the 11-year-old singing prodigy Jackie Evancho, with one calling it "the journalistic equivalent of a drive-by shooting." And Sally Im, a reader from Manhattan, objected to a review of "George Balanchine's "The Nutcracker" the year before, in which the critic observed that two principal dancers were a bit plump. "Beyond straight insult to these hardworking dancers," Ms. Im wrote, "the comments reveal nothing about how they danced." A certain backwash of discomfort is perhaps inevitable, given the scale of The Times's body of work, which is poured out every day in the Arts sections and weekly in the Book Review. Approximately 40 people, staff and freelance, produce reviews, and that does not count the Book Review, which taps outside reviewers and is operated separately. We are talking about thousands of reviews every year. I asked Jonathan Landman, The Times's culture editor, to discuss in an e-mail exchange this sprawling critical combine so readers could get a better understanding of the rules that The Times plays by. Starting with the basics, I asked him to define the purpose of reviews. He said a review should inform, excite and entertain. A reader should walk away with a feeling of having learned something; maybe some unfamiliar facts about a work and its creator; maybe some historical or philosophical background; perhaps something about the art form itself. He added: "A review should make you want to run out to a play, flip on the TV, wake up to new possibilities. A negative review should be exciting too; why shouldn't bad art make you angry? Reviews, he said, are both a consumer service and news, and ought to be a pleasure to read. What The Times chooses to review varies by art form, Mr. Landman said. The Times obligates itself to review every movie that gets a full week's commercial release in New York or Los Angeles (nearly 700 last year). Books, by contrast, are entirely discretionary (and too numerous for it to be otherwise). Broadway openings and productions by the Metropolitan Opera and New York City Opera are also mandatory. Reviews are assigned for "nearly all concerts" at the New York Philharmonic, "all major performances in Carnegie Hall," and "a hefty chunk of the offerings at the Metropolitan Museum and MoMA but not everything." Across the remaining arts landscape, it is all discretionary, with perhaps the widest latitude given to Michael Kimmelman, The Times's recently minted architecture critic. Mr. Kimmelman has used the free rein of his job to drastically redefine it. Instead of reviewing splashy new buildings by the star architects of the planet, as many architecture critics have done, he writes about the intersection of human beings and how they use the built environment. An innovative kindergarten in a poor neighborhood of Bogotá, Colombia; a modest addition to a Le Corbusier landmark in France; a retrofitted housing project in a poor suburb of Paris; a new housing complex in the South Bronx - these, not the latest Frank Gehry project, are what he has been writing about. He sees the role as "a public policy position, urban affairs position that coincides with architectural criticism." A. O. Scott, the movie critic, does not enjoy the same latitude but, he told me, he finds his own ways of defining his work. He wrote in an e-mail, "A film review is like a pop song or sitcom script: the strictures of the form are both confining and, as you try to bend and refresh them, liberating." And, while the movie studios and chains spend heavily to influence moviegoers, Mr. Scott said, he and his fellow reviewers offer "a different picture, sometimes by leading with skeptical or negative reviews of hyped movies, sometimes by praising the artistry of commercial products, and sometimes by pointing our readers in the direction" of smaller-budget films with artistic merit. Mr. Landman views these attempts at defining the critic's frame of reference - Kimmelman-style and Scott-style - as entirely appropriate. Critics, he said, are not supposed to be objective; they are free to champion certain kinds of work. They are "free to like or dislike anyone or anything." But, he adds, there are limits to this principle. You don't want a TV critic who decides in advance that all reality TV is stupid, or a theater critic who hates musicals. What's crucial is that whatever a critic's philosophy or taste, whatever he might have written about an artist in the past, he approaches each work honestly, with an open mind. As for the sometimes perplexing redundancy of book reviews in the Arts section and the Sunday Book Review, he explained that these are assigned independently and are not coordinated. Those in the Arts sections "are meant to reflect, in effect, the judgment of The New York Times," while those in the Book Review are written by "outsiders" and are intended as part of a "conversation about books going on in the wider literary world." For my part, I am comfortable with the philosophy of criticism laid out by Mr. Landman. This is one part of the news operation where firmly stated opinion, in the form of a critic's expert judgment, can serve to educate, amuse and delight - but, I would have to add, should never come at the expense of the subject's dignity.