specificity

“Ragtime” draws a portrait of America at a time of turmoil with broad dramatic strokes and emotional specificity, a high-wire act that might daunt the likes of Houdini—yet another character in the show.

That temporal and site specificity gives the place much of its power.

“As we went on, the specificity of every moment wasn’t necessarily fixed,” Dickinson notes.

But some experts and many Altadena residents worry that the report’s lack of specificity helps officials dodge accountability and makes it more difficult to ensure that such a catastrophic failure doesn’t happen again.

Yet his homespun wit and his emotional specificity also bear the influence of the master he describes as his “songwriting GOAT”: John Prine.