I read this book when it was new, and rely on dim memories for my reaction. I believe that what you are calling "Tiptree's signature anguish" seemed to me to be out of proportion for what there was to be anguished about, and the book accordingly seemed overwrought to me. This is not a reaction I had previously had to Tiptree's earlier short stories, but I did sense it in some of her later work, and it was this which convinced me that the outing of her identity marked the death of James Tiptree, and that the later works were by a functionally different writer.
I'd probably go along with overwrought, and I'd probably agree that Tiptree wasn't the same writer after she was outed, but I still think the quality of the world-building in Up the Walls of the World is pretty spectacular. The only stories of hers I've thought were actively bad were Tales of the Quintana Roo.
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