Instead , he 's the kind of writer who can stare at the wall of his house in New Rochelle -LRB- as he did with '' Ragtime '' -RRB- , think about the year the house was built ( 1906 ) , follow his thoughts to the local tracks that once brought trolleys from New Rochelle to New York City and wind up with a book featuring Theodore Roosevelt , Scott Joplin , Emma Goldman , Stanford White and Harry Houdini . ''