The New York Times reviews especially important books twice -- once by a staff member, and that goes in the Arts section, and once by a featured critic (often times an outsider), whose review ends up in the Sunday Book Review supplement.
Does anyone know why metacritic used the staff review of Pynchon's Against the Day (which really tore the book apart) rather than the official review in the NYT Book Review supplement?
This is the difference between the New York Times giving Against the Day an absymal score, rather than a superb score, which probably would have significantly affected its ratings.