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At a preview for Brokeback Mountain, women throughout the audience gasped with pleasure when cowboys played by Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger started a fond embrace. Was this going to be a Mulholland Drive for ladies? Or simply a gay Western? Neither label will suffice, but this tale of a love affair between a ranch hand and a rodeo cowboy, and their subsequent attempts to forge a life together and apart, is a perfect match for Ang Lee. The director fully commits to his characters, refusing to paint them into any predetermined corners, allowing their stories to unfold gracefully, passionately, and toward not-so-inevitable climaxes. Larry McMurtry adapted the screenplay from a stunning story by Pulitzer Prize winner E. Annie Proulx, originally published in the New Yorker. 612-375-7600; www.walkerart.org

Hero or rascal? Liberal threat or viable candidate? Could Al Franken be our next senator, really? Well, he can certainly charm his way across a room full of snakes, but when it comes right down to it, the guy can’t even pretend to be moderate about anything. Then again, neither can the folks in charge in Washington these days. And when you think about it, how big is the step from actor politicians to comedian politicians? At the very least, we’d like to see somebody brave a debate with this consummately funny, well-spoken, well-informed, and occasionally visionary fellow. Franken’s latest book, The Truth (With Jokes), further evidences his knack for using humor to turn political discourse on its ear. And while someone will inevitably show up at this reading with a debate in mind, we’re going just for laughs. 3225 69th St. W., Edina; 952-920-0633

Windy but precise, laden with words that have no life outside the dictionary, and generously slathered with footnotes, David Foster Wallace has achieved acclaim for a kind of writing style seldom seen outside of graduate English programs. Of course, it also helps that his essays for Harper’s, the New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly and other magazines are deeply informative and surprisingly engaging. Another part of their appeal lies in his willingness to observe himself as an awkward outsider in all-American settings such as a state fair or a cruise ship, with results that are often hilarious. This new book brings together Wallace’s ventures into weird, new landscapes from the last few years, including a lobster festival and a booth with a conservative radio talk show host.

Dropping out of school at age thirteen would seem not to set a young woman up for a life in letters, but more than sixty books later, Doris Lessing has the last laugh at the vicious nuns and finishing-school marms who made her formal education such a drag. A self-made and wickedly sharp intellect with an unrestricted imagination, Lessing has lived in several countries (including South Africa, which exiled her for her political views), been observant witness to the twentieth century’s most pivotal political and social moments, and defied in her work and life the prescribed behavior for women of her generation. In Time Bites, her first collection of essays, she explores with typical precision and wit a huge range of topics, including Sufism, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, American isolationism, and the imagined sex life of Leo Tolstoy. At eighty-six, Lessing remains a vital force in literature, and she’s not planning on retiring anytime soon.

Don’t let the title fool you: This show based around animal imagery is, if anything, more cryptic than cute. Among its nine artists are the eccentrically folky Juliette Oken, a local; New York-based Larissa Bates, whose mythological landscapes are, according to one art magazine, selling as fast as she can make them; Robert Marbury of Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists fame, who creates funny and frightening beasts from old stuffed animals; and Mark Hosford, who makes prints and drawings and also oversees the International Museum of Dog Food. 2640 Lyndale Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-871-2263; www.soovac.org

Gustafson was an integral part of the Minnesota art community until his early death in 2003. Because of his sensitivity to light and nuance, he was the natural choice of many local artists when it came to having their work photographed. Over the years, the relationships he built among artists in a host of mediums helped him amass an astounding collection. Highlights from this trove make this exhibit an eye-opening survey of the region’s talents; also included in the show are works from Gustafson’s own portfolio, which reveals that his affections for France were as strong as his Minnesotan roots. 612-870-3131; www.artsmia.org

We waited all year for a surprise like this. Provocative, global-minded, warm, and even uninhibited pieces make up this juried show of works by twenty-six artists from around the state. Compelling discoveries include the super-psychedelic Georgie Girl Hart, by Andy Messerschmidt of Ely (pictured), and Plymouth resident Chuck Avery’s Separation, a photograph of concrete blocks and gravel piles that recalls seventies land art. Though this biennial focuses on two-dimensional media, its photographs, prints, paintings, and drawings are anything but flat. We’re already anticipating next year’s biennial, devoted to works with that utterly transformative third dimension. (The artists will share a little back story at a “Slide-o-Rama” slide-show event on December 8.) 50 W. Kellogg Boulevard (at Market Street), St. Paul; 651-266-1030; www.mmaa.org

The tradition of grand and inaccurate predictions about the future of prefab houses goes back almost a hundred years, to the first sales of Sears mail-order kit homes in the early 1900s. Now, though, prefab home designs seem actually to be getting somewhere, both in terms of the number being produced and home builders’ desire for them (stoked in part by countless stories in design and lifestyle magazines). When it comes to organizing an exhibition on this trend, the Walker is a natural–not just because of its design pedigree, but because several prefab home designers operate right here in the Twin Cities. Its show explores a full range of prefab concepts, from tiny, remotely situated cabins to chic two-story homes in the city. The homes share a simplicity in design, but there’s nothing generic or homogenous about them; the thought that has gone into them suggests that eternal hope of architects: better living by design. (An architectural tour of Twin Cities prefabricated houses is planned for February 2006; details to be announced.) 612-375-7622, www.walkerart.org